THE 

RELIGION 

OF 

N AT U R E 




E, Kay Robinson 




Class 3iu^ 

rop\Tighl X" 

C01'M<ir.llT DKHOSIT. 



I 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 



J 



THE 



RELIGION OF NATURE 



.^X' 



A 



§Y; ' • 



Er KAY ROBINSON 




NEW YORK 

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 

MCMVI 



^LiZl 



LIBRARY of CONGRESSJ 
TwoCoDlcs Received 

JUN II 1906 

Cepyrirfhi Entry , 
ICLASS Aix/c. N^ 



.1?7 



Copyright, 1906, by 
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 



Published June, 1906, N 



TO THE HEADS OF ALL 

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 

BECAUSE, ALTHOUGH DOGMAS CLASH AND 

CREEDS DIFFER, 

THERE IS ONLY ONE 

TRUTH. 



For the right that wants assistance, 
'Gainst the wrong that needs resistance. 
For the future in the distance, 

For the good that we can do! 



PREFACE 

In this little book my object is not to preach, 
but to prove on logical and scientific grounds, 
and in language which all can understand, that 
man has inherited the spirit of God and will re- 
turn to God. 

In my earliest childhood I was entrusted, dur- 
ing the absence of my parents in India, to the 
care of a Scotch clergyman of the severest school. 
His sermons and his moral exhortations were, so 
far as my memory serves, all of the gloomiest 
and most terrifying kind. The end of the world 
and the commencement of unending torment were 
always in my mind — at the age of five — as prob- 
able occurrences of every day. 

My very earliest recollection of nature and 
wild life is bound up with this haunting dread. I 
was in the garden one day when a wild duck flew 
by. I had never seen one before; and, with its 
neck stretched out in front and no tail to speak 
of behind, I mistook one end of the bird for the 
other, and thought it was flying tail-first. 

I vividly experience even now the hot-cold rush 
[vii] 



PREFACE 

of thought Into my amazed mind : " A bird flying 
backwards! The impossible coming to pass! The 
end of the world ! '' I rushed indoors and up- 
stairs, and hid under my cot in terror. Such is 
the state of nerves to which too much religion of 
the frightening kind can reduce a child of five. 

Removed to home surroundings by the return 
of my mother from India, the end of the world 
and my own certain damnation were still my ter- 
rors in the night; and by day I must have been 
rather a terror to my seniors with my constant 
efforts to get some light on the subject. They 
could not solve my diflSculties ; so they put me off 
by saying that we must believe without ques- 
tioning. 

When I grew older, the problem — of course, 
an old one — presented itself: Why is it wicked 
to ask questions? We have been given reasoning 
power by God: and one could understand that it 
might be wicked to refuse to use God's gift. But 
how can it be wicked to use this in relation to the 
most important fact of existence, namely, the 
future of one's soul.^^ 

So I tried to reason the thing out: but the 
more I tried the more wrong and cruel everything 
seemed to be. 

But that was only because the reasoning did 
not go quite far enough. By slow degrees I 

[ viii ] 



PREFACE 

worked out the problem; and now I find myself 
possessed of a faith the chief beauty and value 
of which — to my mind — lies in the fact that it 
brings religion and science into harmony. 

It is no longer " wicked " to ask questions and 
to seek the truth. The more you ask the more 
truth you find. 



There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore. 
There is society where none intrudes 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar; 
I love not man the less, hut Nature more 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be or have been before. 
To mingle with the universe and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

Byron. 



[ix] 



T 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Mak and Other Animals 3 

"A Freethinker's" Challenge— Cruelty of Na- 
ture — The Human Point of View — Man's 
Unconsciousness in Peril — Hypnotic Uncon- 
sciousness — Parallel of the Telegraph Office 
— Flagellants and Devotees — Meaning of 
" Sensation " — Why Animals are Spared 
Pain — Man as a Hunting Animal — Man as 
a Person. 

II. Instinct and Reason 21 

Automatic Actions — Blinking in Self-Defense 
— Acting " without Thinking " — The Instan- 
taneity of Instinct — A Horse's Quick Hear- 
ing — Relics of Old Habit — Where Instinct 
Passes Reason — Where Instinct Fails. 

III. The Realm of Unconsciousness 33 

The Conception of the " Soul " — Unconscious 
Insects — The Growth of Habits — " Shame " 
in a Dog — Need of New Words — The Sensi- 
tive Plant — The Sea Anemone — The Wasp as 
a Parent — Lord Avebury's Ants — " Unnat- 
ural" Conduct of Birds — Cannibal Mothers 
— Consciousness and Morality. 

IV. Actions of Animals Explained 55 

Utilitarian Origin of all Emotions — The 
" Feelings " of Dogs — Animals Have Mem- 
ory — Nine Typical Objections — Actions of 
the Horse — The Chased Hare — The Dog 

[xi] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Again — Birds and Their Young — Hunted 
Creatures — The Worm and the Hook — Cattle 
and the Slaughterhouse — The Horse's Limi- 
tations — Contrast Between Dog and Cat — 
Animal Insensibility. 

V. Some Popular Errors 77 

Fairy Stories — Small Birds and the Cuckoo 
— "■ God's Cock and Hen " — Naturalist Story- 
tellers — Dog and Bov — Cleverness of Dogs — 
*'The Cad^' and "the Jester ''—" Tears of 
Anguish '' — Prescient Cattle — The Working 
of Old Instinct — Misleading " Science " — 
Brushing Cows — Horse and Burning Stable 
— Moaning of Dog — Intelligence of a Cock — 
A Dog's '' Remorse " — Hooked Fish. 

YI. The Rise of Coxsciousxess 101 

"Why Man Alone Has Knowledge of Pain — 
The Use of Suffering — Man Always Finds 
His Level — Summary of the Argument — 
Evidence that Man Alone is Self-Conscious 
— Language — Self-Decoration — Bower Birds 
and Motmots — The Religious Sense — How 
Consciousness Began — Concerted Action — 
— Bees — Wolves — Rooks' '' Sentinels " — The 
Human Foot and its Story — Rising by Hard- 
ship — Beginning of Concerted Action — Self- 
Restraint and the Moral Sense — Stupendous 
Consequences. 

YII. God ix Max 1^9 

V/hat is Consciousness? — Imperfections of 
Language — " The Likeness of God " — The 
L'nitv of Xature — Types of Evolution — The 
Birth of a Chicken^tory of the Gall— Hu- 
man Progress — The Creation — Conflicting 
Critics — The Yirgin Birth and Incarnation — 
Science's Limitations. 



[xii] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VIII. Anatomy no Guide 143 

The Brain and the Mind — Anatomy's Limi- 
tations — Minds of Monkey and Man — An 
Imaginary Incident — The Growth of Lan- 
guage. 

IX. Authorities in Support 151 

Darwin's Remarkable Admission — Atheists 
and ultra-Humanitarians — Kant's Testimony 
— David Hume as a Witness — Some Modern 
Thinkers — Letters from Correspondents. 

X. Cruelty to Animals 167 

Humanitarian Objectors — Cruelty and Civil- 
ization — Trying to Hide the Light — A Dog's 
Lapses — Nobility of Domestic Animals — 
"The Larger Hope"— Our Educative In- 
fluence. 

XL Conclusion 179 

Summary of the Argument — The Creed of 
Nature— The Next Step? 



[ ^lii ] 



^' I will even risk incurring your ridicule by confessing 
one of my fondest dreams, that I may succeed in making 
some of you English youths like better to look at a bird 
than to shoot it; and even desire to make icild creatures 
tame J instead of tame creatures wild," — Ruskin. 



I 

MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 



As our dear animals do sufer less 
Because their pain spreads neither right nor left. 
Lost in oblivion and foresightlessness — 
Our suffering sore by faith shall be bereft 
Of all dismay and every weak excess, 
Christ's presence shall be better in our pain, 
Than even self-absence to the weaker brain. 

George Macdonald. 



CHAPTER I 

MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

" A Freethinker's " Challenge— Cruelty of Nature— The 
Human Point of View — Man's Unconsciousness in 
Peril — Hypnotic Unconsciousness — Parallel of the 
Telegraph Office — Flagellants and Devotees — Meaning 
of " Sensation " — Why Animals are Spared Pain — 
Man as a Hunting Animal — Man as a Person. 

IN the following pages I hope to bring home to 
all readers the truth of the views which have 
brought comfort and complete satisfaction to 
myself. 

For more than a score of years the problem of 
the apparent cruelty of the world was daily in 
my mind. Nature in almost all its details seemed 
to undermine the very basis of religion ; but 
gradually I came to see the very truth, and now I 
find nature to be the bed-rock of true religion, 
insomuch that the future of the human soul itself 
— as taught by religion — is only the crown of 
natural evolution. 

I should probably not, however, have ventured 
to put my views in detail into print, but for an 
accident. 

[3] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

A little while ago " A Freethinker " whose 
name, if pubhshed, would surprise most of my 
readers — was good enough to write to me that he 
had been struck by the " confident religious note " 
which seemed to inspire some of my writings, and 
he wanted to know how I could reconcile the 
study of nature with belief in religion. 

As a very able controversiahst he allowed me, 
in reply, to sum up his closely-typewritten pages 
in the sentence that nature as we see it — from 
the human point of view — appears intensely cruel 
and, therefore, incompatible with the theory of 
the existence of a merciful God. 

This has, indeed, been a great stumbling-block 
to many good men. 

But, the apparent cruelty of nature having 
been granted — for, indeed, the seeming atrocities 
which are commonplaces in nature are often al- 
most too horrid to be described in print — I was 
able to point out that the whole significance of 
the facts lies in the words " from the human point 
of view " — for, of course, we cannot look at 
nature from any point of view but our own. 

Now, the human point of view is that of a 
conscious personality, a being who feels that he 
has an individual existence apart from his body, 
and who has the power of contemplating and con- 
sidering the injuries which his body may suffer, 

[4] 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

translating them into terms of conscious pain. 
This translation is almost instantaneous, so that 
we do not as a rule recognize any connecting link 
between the two things. When a wasp stings 
your hand, you start and you probably cry out, 
at the same time feeling pain. 

Indeed, looking back upon this incident, you 
ordinarily suppose that the reason why you 
started and cried out was that you consciously 
felt the pain; and this mistake — for it is a mis- 
take — leads you into the further error of sup- 
posing that a dog who similarly jumped and 
yelped in the same circumstances consciously felt 
the pain in exactly the same way. 

Indeed, it is very hard to realize the distinction 
between mental consciousness and bodily sensa- 
tion, or the great difference which may separate 
other animals' " feelings " from ours. We have 
never been in the habit of supposing that there 
was any distinction or difference, because all our 
ideas about pain and suffering and the words in 
which we express them are based on the notion 
that the feeling of pain is necessarily conscious 
and inseparable from the suffering of injury. 
We get just a glimpse of the separation between 
them, however, in cases of urgent peril or des- 
perate struggle. 

Everyone who has been in sudden deadly peril 
[5] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

or has fought hard for his hfe is surprised after- 
wards to recollect that he was conscious of no 
fear and felt no pain from wounds at the time. 
This is owing to the fact that in the terrible 
shock of mortal combat the conscious personality 
who rules every man's thoughts and actions — ex- 
cept such thoughts and actions as are automatic, 
like those of other animals — is temporarily un- 
seated from his throne, and for the moment man 
is an animal fighting instinctively for self-pres- 
ervation. 

At such times, even a civilized man will fix his 
teeth like lightning in the exposed throat of his 
adversary and unconsciously worry it like a wolf, 
unheeding meanwhile the wounds which are being 
inflicted upon himself. 

When the struggle is over, his instinctive ac- 
tions may still be the same as those of any other 
animal in like case ; but the conscious human be- 
ing reasserts his sovereignty in the feeling of sick 
horror at the fearful experience gone through 
and glad gratefulness that the peril has been 
passed. 

Other animals, I hold, are spared the horror 
and denied the gladness; they are consciously 
neither happier nor unhappier for the experience, 
and the character of their subsequent actions is 
modified in no way by those strong waves of 

[6] 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

" feeling " which agitate the man when he thinks 
of the incident. 

In this connection I would quote some lines by 
Kipling, which throw the flashlight of genius on 
the subject. He is describing one of those sudden 
panics to which even British troops are liable, and 
he makes one of the fugitive soldiers say: 

*' Till I 'eard a beggar squealin' out for quarter as he ran: 
An' I thought I knew the voice — an' it was me ! " 

No one can fail to be struck by the absolute, 
inexorable truth of the picture of the soldier 
automatically fleeing for his life and automatic- 
ally calling out for mercy as he did so, just as a 
frightened dog would run and yelp ; while the 
conscious human being in the soldier's body was 
in complete ignorance, as it were, of his proceed- 
ings — until he recognized his own voice! 

Now, this admirably illustrates the point which 
I wish to make clear ; namely, that our own be- 
havior in moments of terrible crisis enables us to 
catch just a glimpse of the distinction between 
the conscious human being and his animal self. It 
is only at such times that the shock, as it were, 
throws human consciousness out of gear, and for 
a moment we see man acting by instinct only like 
any other animal. 

If Kipling's soldier had been shot through the 

[7] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

heart a moment before the conscious power of 
thought returned he would have died as any other 
animal dies, without knowledge of the anguish of 
fear through which he had passed. 

We get another ghmpse of the line of de- 
marcation between the body's sensation of pain 
and the mental consciousness of that sensation, 
even in the human mind, in the case of persons 
who have been hypnotized. 

Not long ago a case was reported at consid- 
erable length in the London papers in which a 
woman, whose state of health forbade the use of 
ordinary anaesthetics, was subjected to hypnotism 
before undergoing a surgical operation. Now, 
the result of hypnotism is to separate the mind 
from the body — to transfer the conscious per- 
sonality from its actual circumstances into what- 
ever environment the hypnotist chooses to sug- 
gest. In this case the effect was remarkable. 

The hypnotist suggested to the mind of the 
woman that nothing worthy of attention was 
about to happen, and throughout the operation 
she kept up a conversation with him about trivial 
matters. At the same time her hand, which he 
was holding, gripped his convulsively at each of 
the moments when, had she not been hypnotized, 
she would have been acutely conscious of pain. 

Although the full details of this case, with 

[8] 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

names, dates, etc., were published in the papers 
at the time, it is immaterial to my case that it 
should be true and authentic. It merely illus- 
trates the well-known fact that the minds of mes- 
merized or hypnotized persons may be uncon- 
scious of injuries which their bodies suffer, and 
on the other hand may feel imaginary pains which 
have not in reality been inflicted. 

Now, I do not say that there is any exact 
analogy between one of the lower animals and a 
hypnotized human being, because the latter lives 
for the time being in unreal circumstances ; but 
such facts as that a woman could talk light-heart- 
edly about her favorite novels and so on, at the 
moments when her tortured body was telegraph- 
ing for aid to her brain and her brain was for- 
warding the message on to the muscles which 
moved her hand, shows that, even in human be- 
ings the feeling of pain and the consciousness of 
feeling pain can be separated. And if they are 
not inseparable, we cannot take any actions, 
which merely show that the bodies of animals feel 
pain, as proof that they are conscious of feeling 
it, since — as I will show later — many other ac- 
tions and emotions of animals which appear 
" conscious " to us, must be quite unconscious. 

Further, as we have no right to suppose that 
one action or emotion of an animal is more con- 

[91 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

scious than another, I am glad to beheve that 
those who fear that animals other than man share 
man's consciousness of suffering must be mis- 
taken. 

It is difficult to realize the all-important differ- 
ence in happiness or unhappiness which this con- 
scious power of realizing one's sensations makes 
between man and other animals ; because, although 
the mind of man is to some extent independent of 
his body, it is still to a greater extent dependent 
upon it. Human consciousness is in fact the 
quintessence of man's mental power, but it is 
situated within the great nerve center of his 
brain, and is still informed, and dominated to a 
great extent, by his nerves. 

Perhaps the best and most natural explanation 
of the matter is to be found by comparing the 
nervous system of the higher animals with a com- 
plete telegraph service, the brain being the re- 
ceiving center of all messages from the nerves 
and the distributing center whence all messages 
are sent out to the muscles. By this machinery 
the actions of an animal automatically corre- 
spond to its sensations ; and in the long process 
of evolution every species of animal has acquired 
a set of rules for doing instantly that which the 
experience of past ages has shown to be the right 
thing to do in any given circumstances. 

[10] 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

Thus, the mind of an animal may be likened to 
an ordinary telegraph-ofBce under an ordinary 
telegraph-master, whose conduct is regulated by 
routine and rule, every message received being 
dealt with promptly in the ordinary course of 
business. 

The human mind, on the other hand, resem- 
bles a more important telegraph office of which a 
superior, responsible official has supreme charge. 
There is still the ordinary telegraph-master at- 
tending to the routine work, so that to outward 
seeming the receipt and dispatch of messages 
scarcely differs from the ordinary system ; but the 
responsible official all the while exercises the power 
of deciding that a certain class of message shall be 
treated in a certain way, that one shall be given 
preference and another put in the background. 

In the former class of office everything goes 
on smoothly and automatically, according to rule, 
and no responsibility troubles anyone. In the 
latter the responsible officials reaps all the credit 
or the blame of success or failure. His is the 
burden of responsibility and his the ambition of 
improvement. He personally feels the consequences 
of everything which happens. 

The parallel is not, of course, exact, because 
you cannot imagine an office conducted by human 
beings so automatically as to eliminate the ele- 

[11] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

ment of personal failure or success ; but it is close 
enough to illustrate the difference in the working 
between an animal mind which is actuated solely 
by a code of instincts, some simple and some com- 
plicated, and a human mind of which a self-con- 
scious personality sits in charge, controlling the 
routine of his instincts — and feeUng the conse- 
quences. 

It is almost entirely owing to the difficulty of 
putting new thoughts into old words that I can- 
not make plain in fewer sentences this difference 
between the unconscious suffering of animals and 
the unhappiness of man. To feel pain is a bodily 
sensation: to dislike the feeling of pain is a con- 
scious thought ; and this " consciousness " which 
distinguishes in the human mind between pleasure 
and pain, as things desirable or otherwise, is only 
another phase, in fact as in word, of the " con- 
science " which distinguishes between good and 
evil. 

And it may be similarly perverted. Most of us 
are apt to think that the conscious feeling of 
pain by a human being and the disHke of it can- 
not be separated; but there is abundance of evi- 
dence to show that they can be, and very often 
are, entirely separated. 

It is well known to medical science that the 
human conscience governs one's notions of pain, 

[12] 



I 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

and that immorality is often accompanied by de- 
light in suffering great pain. 

The sect of the Flagellants, originally a re- 
ligious brotherhood, had to be sternly suppressed 
because of the frenzied excesses of self-torture in 
which its votaries delighted in public. 

In the East to-day you may see self -tortured 
devotees, who cannot help feeling the pain which 
they inflict upon themselves, but certainly do not 
dislike it. 

Now, if the human conscience thus working a 
little aside from the beaten path of thought — for 
in other respects these pain-lovers may be per- 
fectly sane and sensible — can convert feelings of 
agonizing pain into feelings of ecstatic pleasure, 
is it not manifest that our conscious feelings of 
happiness and unhappiness are controlled by and 
belong to our conscience, and that other animals, 
who have no conscience to distinguish between 
right and wrong, must have no consciousness to 
distinguish between happiness and unhappiness? 

This is hard to be understood because our 
language has no word to express sensibility with- 
out consciousness. We know that sensitive plants 
have no consciousness ; but as soon as we begin 
to think of sensitive animals the idea of conscious 
suffering comes at once into our minds, and we 
cannot drive it out. That is the difficulty. 

[13] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

For instance, one controversialist — who may be 
taken as a type of many — has written to me that 
I shall never be able to persuade him that animals 
do not feel pain, although in another part of his 
letter he agrees that they " may not be consciously 
happy or unhappy." That is to say, he admits 
my argument, but he cannot see that, if admitted, 
it destroys his preconceived notion of the " feel- 
ing " of " pain." That is not his fault. We all 
think in words ; and there are no ready-made 
words in which we can think of animals feeling 
pain without being conscious of it. 

We can think of plants being " sensitive " or 
even of low animals " suffering injury" without 
conscious feeling; but as soon as we think of the 
higher animals, creatures of flesh and blood, the 
words " sensitive " and " suffering " carry a 
totally different meaning. 

This is very illogical, because the lower animals 
graduate so finely upwards that there is no point 
in the scale at which you can say, " Here con- 
sciousness beings." It is only when you come to 
man himself that reasons leap to the mind at once 
to prove that by man the realm of consciousness 
is entered for the first time. 

"Why should we assume that other animals 
are spared the consciousness of pain which is such 
a condition in man's life? " is a question which I 

[14] 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMAI.S 

have been asked in various terms. The answer is, 
I think, plain. 

Many animals are born to suffer what would be 
excruciating pain to human beings, through all 
their lives, simply because they are animals of a 
certain species. Take, for instance, the common 
dor beetle. 

This is a mail-clad insect so strongly armored 
that it cannot by any means touch the joints of 
its body or the upper joints of its strong limbs. 
Consequently we find that parasitic mites — bear- 
ing about the same relation in size to the beetle 
as rats would bear to a man — cluster and multi- 
ply at these joints, sucking the living juices of 
the beetle's tissues. 

The beetle can do nothing at all to help itself, 
simply because it is born to be a certain kind of 
beetle. Its troubles are part of its existence. It 
is the natural vehicle and provender of a certain 
kind of mite. 

We cannot, therefore, suppose otherwise than 
that the dor beetle comes into the world with 
feelings adapted to the circumstances awaiting 
it. Although laden with a gang of blood-sucking 
parasites, it will go through life, feeding, multi- 
plying, and providing for its young with com- 
plete apathy. 

In the same way man, as an animal — i.e.., in a 
[15] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

state of savage nature — comes into the world with 
feelings adapted to the circumstances awaiting 
him. Who is there that, in hunting, counts hard- 
ships and perils as matters of complaint? Instead, 
these seem in a curious sort of way to be part of 
the pleasures of the chase. That is because man 
is a hunting animal, and hardships and peril in 
hunting are his natural circumstances. 

Otherwise it would be absurd that men whose 
means would purchase every luxury of life should 
gladly risk their lives, and toil more than any 
laborer would toil for pay, merely to kill other 
creatures. 

Even to see the joy of middle-aged gentlemen 
of wealth in the midst of personal discomfort 
when shooting partridges is a large lesson in the 
meaning of " pain " to animals and men. While 
they are after living quarry men are pure ani- 
mals, and do not mind such bodily pain and hard- 
ship as naturally belong to the pursuit. 

Suppose that in his hunting man has had the 
misfortune to be worsted — that, instead of bring- 
ing home the lion's skin, he has lain helpless in 
the grip of the lion. What happens then.? 

Intolerable agony, you suppose, as the lion's 
huge teeth crunch through bone and sinew, nerve 
and flesh. Yet all those, Livingstone and others, 
who have survived the ordeal, tell us that there is 

[16] 



MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 

no pain: only a fierce feeling of anger against 
the brute. This is because, in fighting lions, man, 
as a hunting animal, is in his ancestral place, and 
is temporarily dominated by instinct only. 

Man amid the surroundings of civilization is a 
different creature. He is no longer one of a 
species, born to fight through life and to die 
fighting. He is an individual, with a high sense of 
his personal destiny and of the value of comfort 
and health. He has, as an individual, the oppor- 
tunity to avoid that which is dangerous and pain- 
ful, and to choose that which is safe and pleasant. 
He has to choose also between right and wrong at 
every turn. He hates trouble and loathes pain. 
In his heart he detests wrong and wickedness. He 
is, in a word, self-conscious. 

This is the reason why we may assume that 
other animals are spared the consciousness of 
pain which is such a condition of our life; be- 
cause the extent of human self-consciousness is 
so manifestly the measure by which we can gauge 
the distance that civilized man has risen above 
the animal level. 

Another great truth to remember is that, as a 
hunting animal, man was the enemy of almost 
everything that breathed: as a conscious person 
he becomes more and more the friend of every 
living thing. This is the working of God in him. 

[17] 



II 

INSTINCT AND REASON 



"Animals are not guided in inferences by reasoning; 
neither are children; neither are the generality of mankind 
in their ordinary actions and conclusions. . . . Nature 
must have provided some other principle of more ready and 
more general use and application" — David Hume. 



CHAPTER II 

INSTINCT AND REASON 

Automatic Actions — Blinking in Self-Defense — Acting 
" without Thinking " — The Instantaneity of Instinct — 
A Horse's Quick Hearing — Relics of Old Habit — 
Where Instinct Passes Reason — Where Instinct Fails. 

IT IS only because we are so familiar with ac- 
tions like taking food or going to sleep, or cough- 
ing to clear our throats, etc., that we do not 
regard their operation as evidence of conscious 
intelligence; but perhaps I may be able to illus- 
trate the exact parallelism — with a difference — 
between such actions, which are performed by 
instinct, and those which are dictated by our 
consciousness, if I instance the conduct of a 
human being when threatened by an enemy. 

Suppose that a man approaches you with a 
manifestly hostile intent. You read his purpose 
in his mien, and when he aims a blow at you you 
avoid it by dodging. If you know little or nothing 
of the art of self-defense you probably spring 
backwards several feet or " duck.'' If you hap- 
pen to be an expert boxer you may evade the 
[21] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

blow by the movement of your head a few inches 
to one side; or, if you prefer it, you avert 
the blow with a dexterous guard of one hand, 
at the same time returning it with the other. 
That is the triumph of consciousness, armed by 
training. 

But all such conscious acts of self-defense re- 
quire an instant of time for their completion ; and 
the best pugilist is he who, by persistent training, 
has almost learned to translate the conscious pro- 
cesses of his mind into flashes of instinct. What 
this means may be understood from our instinc- 
tive habit of defending our eyes from injury. 
When a man aims a blow at your head you may 
dodge or duck or ward the blow. This will be a 
conscious action. But, if anything seems hkely 
to strike your eye, you blink; and to blink is in- 
stinctive and instantaneous. 

It is a common game among boys to test each 
others' nerve by defying a companion to refrain 
from blinking when a pretended blow is aimed at 
the eye. 

In such a case you know perfectly well that 
you will not be hit. Your reason is commanding 
your nerves to take no notice of the pretended 
blow. Yet, when the fist comes suddenly toward 
your eye — you blink. 

To shut the eyelid over the eye is an admirable 
[ 22] 



INSTINCT AND REASON 

protection against injury. It is so admirable that 
it has become instinctive and instantaneous. 
Your human reason cannot control it. Yet if you 
had been asked whether it was possible for you to 
take action to protect a particular part of your 
body against a blow which threatened it without 
bringing your conscious reason into play, you 
would surely have said No. 

Besides this instinctive habit of blinking in 
self-defense, everyone must have had experience 
of other occasions when he acted by unconscious 
instinct in a way which, had time allowed, his 
conscious reason would not have sanctioned. How 
often one does a thing " without thinking '^ and 
" on the spur of the moment " and is sorry for it 
afterwards ! This is human reason coming too 
late into action. Other animals always act with- 
out thinking, and on the spur of the moment : but 
they are not sorry for it afterwards. They are 
spared the conscious unhappiness which follows 
wrong actions. 

You see a good instance of the instantaneity 
which especially distinguishes instinctive from 
conscious actions in the ordinary conduct of all 
other animals. When you are trying, with a 
camera which has a visible shutter, to photo- 
graph a small bird at close quarters you can 
hardly set the shutter to a speed great enough to 

[23] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

prevent the bird hearing and seeing It In time to 
move Its wings and so spoil the plate. 

If you are sitting quietly by the fire when a 
mouse creeps out on the hearth and some sudden 
noise frightens It, you will, if you analyze your 
sensations at the moment, find that the flight of 
the mouse and your conscious hearing of the noise 
were simultaneous. In fact, you would be Inclined 
to say rather that you saw the mouse bolt before 
you heard the noise. 

In the same way If when you are feeding tame 
pigeons a gun Is fired off somewhere near, you are 
almost certain that the birds crouched In readi- 
ness to fly before you heard the sound. 

In the case of a horse, too, you will frequently 
notice that Its ears are laid back before you are 
conscious of the sound which frightened it, and 
your hand Instinctively tightens on the reins be- 
fore your reason has told you whether there is 
danger or not. After this, it is a contest between 
your human reason and the horse's unthinking 
instinct to flee. 

Many times In India, where It was my custom 
to drive back to office after breakfast at exactly 
twelve o'clock, I had noticed that the mid-day gun 
which was fired near the office compound seemed 
to make my horse start before I heard it. So I 
used to try the experiment of driving up exactly 

[24] 



INSTINCT AND REASON 

to time and when the finger of my watch was on 
the very second of noon I would watch the 
horse's ears and hsten at the same time ; and there 
seemed to me no doubt whatever that the horse 
took alarm before I knew that I had heard the 
sound. 

What was even more interesting was my dis- 
covery — as it seemed — that I myself started 
slightly, before I knew that I had heard the sound 
— at the same time, in fact, that the horse laid 
back its ears. If this was so — for it was very 
difficult to make quite sure of the succession of 
events which collectively occupied only an instant 
of time — the unconscious start would be a relic 
of the old instinctive habit of men, as animals, 
to take instantaneous, unthinking action when 
danger threatened. 

In cases where such instantaneous action has 
remained useful — as in the case of blinking when 
danger threatens the eye — human nature has re- 
tained the instinctive habit, because our conscious 
reason would in such cases operate too late by 
a fraction of an instant. Also the sudden tauten- 
ing of the muscles, and the grip of the hands 
upon whatever you may be holding, when some- 
thing makes you " start," have been retained by 
human nature, because these are more often use- 
ful than otherwise. 

[25] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

All instinctive actions of a larger kind, how- 
ever, appear to have been brought under the con- 
trol of our conscious reason ; because it would 
manifestly be dangerous for a comparatively 
slow-moving animal like man to betray his pres- 
ence to an enemy by moving before he had realized 
the situation and had made up his mind what was 
the best course to adopt. Depending upon his 
brains rather than his speed or his strength, he 
acquired the power of thinking before acting. 

In the struggle of existence every kind of crea- 
ture has acquired the unconscious instinctive 
habit of suiting its conduct to circumstances. 
Each individual inherits this habit from its an- 
cestors ; and the actions which it performs are 
specially suited to the varied conditions of its 
life, because they have gradually been developed 
by the experience of ages. 

It is true that, of the various lines of conduct 
open to us at any moment, our human reason 
selects that which seems the right one ; but nature, 
in the case of other animals, has made the selec- 
tion once for all by the slow process of eliminat- 
ing all courses but the right one. Thus the actions 
of animals (which would not exist to-day if long 
lines of ancestors had not handed down to them 
the habit of doing the right thing in any natural 
circumstances) often appear to us to be prompted 

[26] 



INSTINCT AND REASON 

by intelligence similar to ours, because they are 
similar to those which human reason would 
prompt us to perform in like case. 

Sometimes, indeed, they compel our admiration 
as being much more clever and wonderful than 
any that human reason could have dictated. 

Such, for instance, is the action of the little 
gall-fly which has inherited the habit of deposit- 
ing some extraordinary irritant — so it is sup- 
posed — with the eggs which it lays in the tissues 
of plants, with the result that a wonderful and 
beautiful growth takes place round the maggots 
which emerge from the eggs, supplying them with 
a comfortable nursery made of solid food which 
lasts them through the whole of their maggot- 
life, and afterwards serves them as a dry shelter 
during their long pupa-sleep. In cases like this 
the instinctive actions of other animals transcend 
the limits of human forethought and reasoning 
power. 

And, inasmuch as we also are animals, many of 
our most important actions, such as taking food 
and going to sleep, are performed by instinctive 
habit beyond the aid of our intelligence. 

There are many cases, however, in which in- 
stinctive habits fall short of human reasoning 
power, because nature has worked within the strict 
limits of the past experience of each race, and 

[2T] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

has only been able to provide animals, other than 
man, with a set of ready-made impulses, which do 
not always suit circumstances that are entirely 
novel. 

As an instance, we may take the habit of many 
moths — ^whose outspread wings are so mottled 
and streaked with grays and browns as to be 
concealed admirably when the creature rests on 
tree-trunk or rock — of " hiding " themselves for 
the day on black-painted palings, where they are 
conspicuous thirty yards off. There were no such 
things as black palings when the insects acquired 
their habit of resting with outspread wings on 
any perpendicular surface, and nature has not 
been able to teach them to discriminate. 

In the same way, when some jungle in India 
has been fired, the gray-brown jackals will crouch 
in full view to " hide " upon the blackened 
ground. There were no such things as jungle 
fires when nature gave the jackal a gray -brown 
hide which conceals it so well on the dry gray- 
brown earth; and therefore the beast has never 
learned that he should not crouch on black 
ground. 

Thus we see that there are some cases In which 
instinctive habits go far beyond human reason in 
the wonderful results obtained, and others which 
fall so far short as to appear stupid to us ; but in 

[28] 



INSTINCT AND REASON 

the majority of cases, perhaps, nature's selection 
of the proper course of conduct coincides fairly 
well with the choice that we should have made ; 
and it is for this reason that we have hitherto 
always made the mistake of regarding the actions 
of animals as the outcome of a conscious intelli- 
gence not very dissimilar from ours. 



[29] 



Ill 

THE REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 



'' Observe the steps^ and continually study the history of 
Nature . . . for there is nothing contributes so much 
to greatness of mind. He that is rightly affected with this 
speculation has in a manner laid his body aside" — Marcus 
AuRELius, Book 10, Paragraph 11. 



CHAPTER III 

THE REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

The Conception of the "Soul" — Unconscious Insects — The 
Growth of Habits — " Shame " in a Dog — Need of New 
Words — The Sensitive Plant — The Sea Anemone — The 
Wasp as a Parent — Lord Avebury's Ants — " Unnat- 
ural " Conduct of Birds — Cannibal Mothers — Con- 
sciousness and Morality. 

That we should have invented such a word as 
" soul " to describe our conscious personality and 
that we should feel the need of a religion or at 
least of a " belief," to account for the existence 
of the soul, shows that our human view already 
passes beyond our bodies and — when the needs of 
this world permit — fixes itself upon the hereafter. 
Other animals have no such ideas, for the same 
reason that they have no sense of happiness and 
unhappiness. Their conduct is always regulated 
by their surroundings, in the same way as that of 
plants, although we, whose instinctive expressions 
of our emotions resemble those of other animals, 
find it hard to believe that creatures which seem 
to share our emotions do not also share our 
feelings. 

[33] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

In this connection it is interesting to follow 
through nature the several stages by which man 
has reached this remarkable pre-eminence. 

Among the lowest types of animals the nervous 
system, which has culminated in the brain of man, 
is not distinguishable, and is certainly not differ- 
ent from that of the lowest orders of plants. 
There are still some creatures concerning which 
scientists debate whether they should be classed 
as animals or plants. 

But for our present purpose we need not go 
lower than the insects — creatures which, in many 
ways, are as highly developed as man himself. 
Here we find the nervous system concentrated in 
knots or ganglia, situated at intervals down the 
body, with the result that one part of an insect 
has no correct knowledge of what another part 
may be suffering or enjoying. 

A wasp may be snipped with a pair of scissors 
across the narrow " waist " which separates the 
thorax from the abdomen, and it will still go on 
feeding as though nothing had happened, al- 
though the syrup which it swallows merely makes 
a pool behind its severed trunk. 

A sleeping moth upon a tree-trunk may be 
dexterously transfixed by an entomologist with a 
pin, so that it does not even awake. 

I have seen a large moth which had been trod- 
[34] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

den upon on the pavement so that the upper part 
was squashed flat and had dried to a mere scale 
on the stone, but its tail continued busily to lay 
eggs. 

The reason of these things, which could be 
multiplied indefinitely, is that there is no eff^ective 
connection between the separate knots of nerves 
in insects ; and, of course, it follows that there 
can be no sense of personal individuality in crea- 
tures whose several parts are thus separately 
sensitive. 

Yet the actions of the bee and the wasp and the 
ant are constantly quoted as giving evidence of 
an intelligence almost equal to our own, and Lord 
Avebury says that the reason of ants diff^ers only 
in degree and not in kind from ours. 

Thus we are naturally tempted in our admira- 
tion of the insects' " cleverness " to lift them al- 
most up to the human level : whereas what we ought 
to do is to recognize that most of our own emo- 
tions and clever actions are as automatic in them- 
selves as those of these animals, and that it is 
only our human consciousness which invests them 
in our own case with a halo of dignity. 

Look at a bird's feather, a fish's scale, or a 

mammal's hair under the microscope. Each is an 

object of wonderfully -beautiful elaboration in 

its minute adaptation to the needs and interests 

[35] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

of the creature that wore It ; yet each has the 
same simple utilitarian origin, modified by the 
slow process of evolution. Cast the searchlight of 
your mind In the same way upon the most com- 
plicated and wonderful actions performed by in- 
sects, fish, reptiles, birds, beasts, or (in most 
cases) man; and you discover the same e^ddence 
of simple utilitarian origin, modified b}' evolution. 

It is difficult, however, to realize that habits of 
mind are as directly the result of natural evolu- 
tion as are the features of the body. 

Many of us, for instance, are apt to think that 
because a dog seems to exhibit symptoms of 
shame, gladness, remorse, gratitude, etc., similar 
to those shown by human beings, this proves that 
a dog has the same consciousness of these emo- 
tions as we have. But it does not really prove 
tills. It merely proves that we have inherited 
habits of action similar to those of other animals. 

Take the case of a dog exhibiting what looks 
like shame, because In one way or another it has 
been made to appear ridiculous or unworthy. This 
simply means that the dog — being a gregarious 
animal by nature, descended from ancestors who 
maintained their position in the pack by their 
prestige — automatically adopts the best course 
to avoid more trouble when he has been humbled. 

[36] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

He skulks out of sight or, in the open, wears a 
hangdog air, and so avoids getting into quarrels 
until he is himself again. It is merely an elabora- 
tion of the instinct of the weak to keep in the 
background ; and is no more a proof of conscious- 
ness than is the microscopical elaboration of each 
of the hairs upon his body. Both are wonderful 
adaptations in their several ways to the animal's 
needs ; but neither is necessarily appreciated at 
its proper value by the animal, which performs 
its actions, as it grows its fur, by inherited 
tendency. 

My chief difficulty in making my argument 
clear as I go along is that the principle which I 
am trying to explain is so new that no ready-made 
words exist for its proper expression. Never be- 
fore has a distinction been drawn in common 
words between the human and the animal sense of 
" pain " : because we have not realized that there 
was any difference. The unhappiness which we 
suffer on account of pain seems so inseparably 
connected with the pain itself that it has not oc- 
curred to us to invent a word to describe the 
natural bodily protest of a living organism 
against injury, as something different from the 
human sense of conscious suffering. And, as all 
of us unconsciously think in words, it is very 

[37] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

hard for me to convey the idea to the minds of 
others. 

That there has always, however, been need for 
a word to express the idea is shown by the exist- 
ence of hving things hke the well-known Sensitive 
Plant, which closes all its leaflets tightly together 
if you merely touch it. 

What word is there to express the feeling which 
prompts the Sensitive Plant thus to resent in- 
terference? We cannot credit it with our human 
sense of resentment and apprehension, because it 
is merely a plant. Yet its action is so suggestive 
of feehng similar to ours, that we often use the 
Sensitive Plant as a simile for some gentle human 
being with nerves so highly-strung that the slight- 
est touch causes mental agony. Since we have 
no word to express the diff^erence between the 
sensitiveness of the Sensitive Plant and the sensi- 
tiveness of a human being, I have tried to mark 
the diff*erence by calling one kind of sensitiveness 
" unconscious " and the other " conscious." 

When I talk — as above — about the feelings of 
a plant, all are probably willing to concede that 
there is a manifest diff*erence here, and that " un- 
conscious sensitiveness " may be allowed to de- 
scribe the feelings of a vegetable that moves when 
touched. But where will you draw the line be- 
tween the animal and the vegetable.'^ Men of sci- 

[38] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

ence cannot draw it with certainty; and it is 
significant that the lowest animal-plants or plant- 
animals have freer power of movement than all 
higher plants and than many higher animals. 

There is no doubt, again, about the status of 
the sea-anemone as an animal ; yet it has no better 
means of protesting against interference than has 
the Sensitive Plant, for it simply closes up when 
touched. At the same time it can to a slight ex- 
tent it can sting like a nettle and captures its food 
in the same way as the sundew plant, which is 
common on Enghsh marshes. For the sundew is 
a small plant with a flat rosette of little red leaves. 
Each leave bristles with sticky tentacles ; and so 
soon as an unlucky insect, tempted by the odor 
of the sticky fluid, alights upon the leaf, all the 
tentacles close in upon him and the leaf remains 
closed over his corpse until the last particle of 
juice has been sucked from his tissues. I have 
seen tame sundew plants in flower pots, that were 
regularly fed on flies : and what more can the sea- 
anemone do than this? 

As evidence, moreover, that the sea-anemone, 
although undoubtedly an animal, cannot possess 
any human consciousness of individuality in suf- 
fering, I will quote an experience. 

In an aquarium many years ago I had a num- 
ber of vigorous sea-anemones, and was often 
[39] 



THE EELIGIOX OF KATUEE 

astonished by the impartiality with which each of 
them swallowed any objects — edible or inedible — 
which were placed within the ring of tentacles 
surroundincp the mouth. One day I o-ave a half- 
penny to one large anemone, ''to see what it 
would do with it '' ; and the creature's mouth 
stretched and stretched, until the coin was slowly 
engulfed. But the diameter of the halfpenny was 
considerably larger than that of the anemone's 
trunk, and, as tliis did not appear to have the 
same stretching power as the mouth, I was rather 
concerned to see that the tension caused the edge 
of the coin to cut through the tissues, until the 
anemone was divided in half — the upper half still 
spread out hke a flower, and the lower half sand- 
wiched between the halfpenny and the stone on 
which the " sea flower " had been standing. The 
creature was, however, fully prepared for acci- 
dents like this, for it quietly began to disengage 
itself from the stone, and, to my astonishment, 
the end which had been the base of the stalk threw 
out tentacles similar to those at the other end, 
until the halfpenny was decorated with a flour- 
ishing sea-anemone on each side of it ! 

Now, although this was an animal which was 
extremely sensitive to a touch, how can we credit 
it with any sense of indi^-iduality in suff'ering, 
when it quietly allows itself to be cut in half 

[40] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

and each half becomes a complete individual, 
as " sensitive " to a touch as the whole was 
previously ? 

The explanation is, of course, that the sea- 
anemone, like the Sensitive Plant — the animal 
like the plant — has acquired the power of re- 
sponding to a touch for purposes which are use- 
ful in the struggle of existence. It is a matter, 
so to speak, of nerves and muscles, with no con- 
scious brain to direct them, always doing the 
right thing upon such occasion. Such actions 
are what I call " instinctive " : and although the 
proceedings of animals higher in the scale of life 
become more varied and complex, they are in- 
stinctive too. Man is no exception, so far as most 
of the things that he does are concerned. How 
many of us know that on entering a room we 
turn the handle of our door one way, and on leav- 
ing turn it the other way, in spite of the fact 
that most modern door-handles will work either 
way? We do so from habit automatically and un- 
consciously; yet how amazingly clever we should 
think a dog or a cat to be if it knew how to open 
an old-fashioned door from both sides by revers- 
ing the action of its paws ! 

But some actions habitually performed by 
animals, especially by the higher orders of in- 
sects, would seem to be more intelligent than this, 
[41] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

did we not now and then get an insight into their 
purely automatic character. 

There is a soHtary wasp, for instance, the fer- 
tile female of which excavates a gallery leading 
to a chamber in a sand-bank; in the chamber she 
lays an egg, and thereafter keeps the maggot 
which has emerged from the egg supplied with 
fresh food. Throughout her proceedings there is 
every evidence of tense maternal solicitude and re- 
markable intelligence. 

But that the whole business Is automatic is 
shown by the fact that the wasp does not know 
her own maggot-child by sight or scent, nor cares 
whether the nursery be empty. 

If, during her absence, you extract the child, 
and lay it, naked and hungry, at the entrance to 
the gallery, the bustling mother hurries past it, 
pops down the food, and departs, after carefully 
concealing the entrance — with her baby lying out- 
side the door. 

Instances like this show that the marvelous 
maternal instinct in nature — which we, human 
beings, have acquired the power of admiring and 
valuing for its moral beauty and importance to 
us — is really an automatic process of nature, ac- 
quired and exhibited in different ways by most 
higher creatures in the struggle for existence. 
We see the beauty and the use and the joy of it; 

[42] 



KEALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

other creatures perform its function by rote, 
glibly repeating, without understanding, the les- 
son which their ancestors laboriously learned in 
the long experience of ages. We repeat it by rote 
also, but we see and enjoy its beauty. 

Many modern writers of repute — repute justly 
earned by their learning and their literary style — 
have done some harm to the cause of true knowl- 
edge by the omission to draw this line of distinc- 
tion between the automatic instincts of other 
animals and the conscious understanding of man. 

Lord Avebury (better known, perhaps, as Sir 
John Lubbock), who is a splendid authority upon 
the habits of ants, etc., persists in treating those 
habits as if they were the habits of human beings, 
with the result that he leads his readers to a 
standpoint from which they get a wholly incor- 
rect view of nature at large. 

Take, for instance, his account of the ants 
which, he says, collect the eggs of the aphides, or 
plant-lice, which supply them with sugar food, in 
the autumn, cherish them safely underground 
during the perilous time of winter, and in spring 
replace the young aphides which emerge from 
them upon their proper food plants, and thus 
secure for themselves a plentiful supply of sugar 
food during the following summer. In these pro- 
ceedings Lord Avebury sees forethought and rea- 
[43] 



THE EELIGIOX OF NATURE 

soiling power of a high order, placing the intelli- 
gence of ants on the same plane as that of man. 

Now for the interesting facts in this Hfe-his- 
tory of the ants we are all greatly indebted to 
patient investigators who take the pains to ob- 
serve and chronicle them. The pity is that, in the 
enthusiasm of their scientific hobby, they persist 
in wea^dng the facts into a futile parallel between 
the supposed Intelligence or reasoning power of 
other animals and that of man. That no com- 
parison of the kind is legitimate or possible may 
be seen from the following simple facts. 

The ants in question are creatures of the year ; 
therefore they can have no knowledge that autumn 
will be followed by winter, or that the apliis eggs 
will need protection in winter. Therefore their 
action cannot be guided by forethought. 

Throughout the summer, again, the apliides 
have reproduced their kind by the simple process 
of " budding," active young apliides being pro- 
truded by their virgin-mothers. It is only through 
the labors of patient investigators like Lord Ave- 
bury that we know how the apliides tide over 
the winter — the last brood producing both males 
and females which are winged and seek each 
other's company, the females subsequently laying 
eggs which will hatch in the following spring. 
But the ants have no books to tell them about 

[4i] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

these wonders, and therefore they can have no 
idea that the aphis eggs of autumn will produce 
young aphides in spring. Therefore there can be 
no intelligence in their care of the eggs. 

Nor can they have any knowledge that the 
young aphides will require special food-plants. 
We know it, because the books tell us all about 
it; but the ants can have no knowledge that a 
particular kind of aphis must suck the juices of 
particular kinds of plants in order to produce 
sugar. It is absurd, therefore, and very mislead- 
ing, to talk of forethought and reasoning power 
in the actions of the ants, since these are guided 
by facts of which the ants can have no knowl- 
edge whatever. 

It is possible — perhaps it is probable — that the 
ants can recognize the eggs of the aphides by 
scent, and that being accustomed to visit an aphis- 
colony for sugar and finding, one autumn morn- 
ing, that the aphides are producing eggs instead 
of sugar, they may have acquired the habit of 
carrying off the eggs. It is possible, too, that 
some connection of ideas may have given them the 
impulse to restore the young aphides to the plants 
on which they were accustomed to find those in- 
sects producing sugar. Granted the possibility of 
these two suggestions, we may have a correct and 
scientific explanation of the origin of the very re- 
[45] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

markable habits of the ants ; but to ascribe these 
to forethought and reasoning power is mischiev- 
ous, as representing insects on the human plane, 
to which, for want of knowledge, they have no 
chance to rise. 

I have now shown, by instancing the behavior 
of the Sensitive Plant, that living things do not 
necessarily " feel " when their actions suggest 
that they do. Next I Instanced the sea-anemone, 
which, although it is an animal, merely closes up 
when touched, like the Sensitive Plant, while it 
catches its food like the Sundew plant, stings like 
the Nettle plant, and, when divided in half, be- 
comes two separate individuals, as do many plants 
in like case. The consequent presumption Is that 
it has no more conscious " feeling " than a plant. 

I then took the argument higher up the scale 
of animal life, and showed, by describing the be- 
havior of a female solitary wasp, that actions of 
insects which appear to us to be dictated by the 
same sort of maternal affection as a woman feels, 
must be performed by mere Instinctive habit only, 
because the creature cares nothing at all about 
her child. If you take It out of the nursery and 
leave it In Its mother's way. 

I have also shown that It Is a mistake to give 
Insects credit for forethought and reasoning 
powers merely because such " clever " Insects as 

[46] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

ants take care of aphis-eggs, seeing that the ants 
cannot have any idea why they do so. 

And now, to take a few instances which show 
that birds and even mammals lack also the emo- 
tions and affections with which we ordinarily 
credit them. 

Nothing could appear more touching and beau- 
tiful than the parental care of birds for their 
young. They are constantly quoted in literature 
as examples for us to imitate in this respect; and 
it is impossible for us not to admire daily the 
intense devotion which one witnesses, say, in the 
case of a pair of robins rearing their young in 
full view of one of our windows. 

But it is only by realizing that the conduct of 
the robins towards their young is merely an in- 
herited habit which they have acquired because it 
is good for the race in the struggle for existence 
— and that it is not based upon emotion and 
affection such as we " feel " — that we understand 
without difficulty the amazing sequel, when the 
parents mercilessly drive their children away to 
face the troubles of the coming winter as best 
they can, and then fight fiercely with each other. 

The meaning of this is, of course, that it is not 
good for the robins to overcrowd a neighborhood 
in winter. Each one will require all the space of 
hunting-ground that it can keep for itself. So 

[4T] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

the parents, whose devotion to their young was 
so beautiful at first — because it was good for the 
race that the young should be reared — now en- 
gage in cruel conflict with them and with each 
other — because it is good for the race that each 
robin should be sole owner of a hunting ground 
in winter. 

From nature's point of view the fierce com- 
bats between parents and children are just as 
touching and beautiful as their previous relations 
appeared to be ; it is only from the human point 
of view (because man is a gregarious animal, 
thriving best by the co-operation of numbers of 
his kind in summer and winter alike) that the 
family fights appear " unnatural." We do not 
understand how, after tenderly cherishing chil- 
dren, it is possible to wish to kill them soon after, 
if we can, as a matter of course. Get rid, how- 
ever, of the idea that other animals have human 
" feelings," and nothing in nature seems unnatu- 
ral, nor off'ers any stumbling-block to religion 
properly understood. 

By the dry Hght thus thrown on nature at 
large we easily comprehend — to take another in- 
stance — -the strange perversion (as it otherwise 
would seem to us), of parental instinct which im- 
pels birds upon whom a cuckoo has foisted an egg 
to show no concern whatever for their own chil- 

[48] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

dren when these He, naked and dying, below the 
nest from which the infant usurper has ejected 
them. 

It would not be good for the race of any kind 
of small birds, if they bestowed attention upon 
any of their newly-hatched young that chanced 
to fall out of the nest. The chance of rearing the 
unfortunate youngster would be exceedingly re- 
mote ; and if one of the parents should undertake 
the task of covering it at night both would prob- 
ably fall victims to prowling vermin. So nature 
has made a rule that when a newly-hatched bird 
falls out of its nest — a very rare occurrence, per- 
haps, unless a young cuckoo aids its exit — no at- 
tention shall be wasted upon it. 

Thus I have taken the question whether ani- 
mals other than man can have human feelings 
and emotions upwards from the Sensitive Plant, 
the sea-anemone, the wasp, and the ant to the 
bird, finding the answer " No " in every case, and 
will conclude, for the present, with an instance 
among the mammals. 

These, as being almost identical with ourselves 
in general structure and habits, naturally resem- 
ble us more closely in conduct: but what civilized 
human mother can contemplate without revulsion 
the idea that, simply because some more power- 
ful creature had looked into her nursery, and per- 

[49] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

haps touched her children, but without hurting 
them, she should forthwith set to work and de- 
vour them? If this habit were characteristic of 
beasts of prey we might regard it as less " un- 
natural " ; but the inoffensive, vegetable-eating 
rabbit will thus make a horrid meal of her own 
children and exhibit no unhappiness — or discom- 
fort of any kind — afterwards. 

Perhaps, however, it obscures the problem thus 
to emphasize the case of the rabbit, because the 
hedgehog, which, although nominally an insect 
eater, is as bloodthirsty a little beast of prey in 
a covert or fowl-run as the worst of poaching 
cats, will eat its own young as readily as any 
rodent, and the reason for the habit is, I think, 
in neither case hard to discover. The hedgehog 
and the rabbit are animals which are liable to be 
eaten themselves by beasts of prey. In the state 
of nature a nursery of such animals visited by a 
beast of prey is doomed, and the mother with it, 
if she remains in occupation. 

So it would seem that the problem which nature 
had to solve was how to make the best of a very 
bad job, when a nursery had been invaded. And 
apparently nature has settled it, in the best inter- 
est of rabbit and hedgehog, by teaching these 
creatures to forestall the returning beast of prey 
and devour what was left of the family, thus set- 
[50] 



REALM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 

ting themselves free from the dangerous neigh- 
borhood and at the same time — not to put too fine 
a point upon it — getting a nourishing meal. 

But the worst of the matter is that there are 
actually said to be, in the Solomon Islands, human 
beings of so low a type that they also practice the 
same terrible habit in similar circumstances. The 
reason for this is, of course, that these cannibals, 
dwelling isolated for ages under the stress of a 
natural struggle for existence, have not yet suc- 
ceeded in raising their unwritten code of ethics 
above the animal level in this and other particu- 
lars. They have not acquired our civilized sense of 
the beauty of maternal love and the sanctity of 
human life because nature has been against them ; 
and it is not possible that they can enjoy happi- 
ness in motherhood when they feel no unhappi- 
ness after thus destroying their infants. 

Where, owing to his environment, man is still 
compelled to live in some respects the life of an 
animal, there he blindly follows in those respects 
all his animal instincts for the good of the race, 
and enjoys neither happiness nor unhappiness in 
so doing. What he does by instinct he does as a 
matter of course, seeing in it neither wrong nor 
right. 

It is horrid, of course, from the civilized human 
point of view, but a great deal of animal nature 

[51] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

is that. What we have to recognize is that in ad- 
dition to all the instinctive habits which we have 
inherited as animals, we have, in proportion to 
our opportunities as human beings, acquired the 
unique power of conscious thought whereby we 
discriminate between good and evil and feel hap- 
piness and unhappiness. 



[52] 



IV 
ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 



Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. 
Savages are always cruel. 

Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of 
reason, — Dr. Johnson. 



CHAPTER IV 

ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

Utilitarian Origin of all Emotions — The " Feelings " of 
Dogs — Animals Have Memory — Nine Typical Objec- 
tions — Actions of the Horse — The Chased Hare — The 
Dog Again — Birds and Their Young — Hunted Creatures 
— The Worm and the Hook — Cattle and the Slaughter- 
house — The Horse's Limitations — Contrast Between 
Dog and Cat — Animal Insensibility. 

All the means by which natural emotions, in- 
cluding those of man, are spontaneously ex- 
pressed have their utilitarian origin. 

All our expressions of grief are natural to gre- 
garious animals seeking help in trouble; all our 
expressions of happiness are those of gregarious 
animals seeking to make conditions which are 
pleasant to us, pleasant to those around us, thus 
ensuring the continuance of that which is good. 
Frowns, tears, smiles, caresses are all utilitarian 
in origin; and, if we could remove human con- 
sciousness from the earth, the world of animals 
would contain no more happiness or unhappiness 
than the world of plants. 

What we have to realize is that this human con- 
[55] 



THE EELIGIOX OF NATURE 

sclousness, which makes all the difference, exists 
only in man; and that, except from the human 
point of view, there is no happiness or unhappi- 
ness in the world. 

In following this line of thought for the first 
time we find it difficult to understand how, if 
other animals are not " conscious," they can per- 
form certain actions and exhibit certain emotions. 

How, for instance, can a dog, if he is not con- 
scious of pain, ever afterwards exhibit fear of the 
whip that was used to chastise him.^ How can a 
dog who is not conscious of sorrow mope and 
refuse to eat for days merely because he is sep- 
arated from his master or mistress.^ How can a 
dog, unless he is conscious of wrongdoing, behaye 
so shamefacedly on coming into his owner's pres- 
ence, eyen before liis offense has been discovered.^ 

Now, I hope that all readers in whose minds 
objections have arisen similar in purport, if not 
t in detail, to the above will recognize that the 
selection wliich I have made fairly covers the 
ground and that any explanation wliich satisfies 
these will satisfy all. 

For all amount to no more than the suggestion 
in varying forms, that other animals must pos- 
sess consciousness, since they manifestly exliibit 
connections of ideas and memory, giving rise to 
symptoms wliich, if exhibited by human beings, 

[ 56 ] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

would be associated with conscious fear, sorrow, 
shame, etc. But, except in the human mind 
(which is controlled in almost every detail by con- 
sciousness), there is no necessary connection be- 
tween any mental gift or emotion and the con- 
scious knowledge of it. 

Every injury to the body of an animal leaves 
its imprint on the nerve-center, and in the case 
of so severe an experience as a whipping is to a 
dog the imprint lasts so clearly that ever after- 
wards the sight of the whip completes an auto- 
matic nervous connection which brings the ani- 
mal's natural instinct to avoid injury to his body 
into full activity. 

What we regard as his " expressions " of fear 
— the dropped ears and tail, the crouching atti- 
tude, the backward glance — are all the natural 
actions of an animal preparing to evade or dis- 
suade attack. Because, in like circumstances, we 
might know that we should be suffering from the 
consciousness of fear affords no reason for credit- 
ing the dog with similar knowledge. If any kind 
of animal in a wild state did not always instinc- 
tively prepare to evade the repetition of an in- 
jurious experience, it would become extinct; and 
what we regard as painful signs of fear in our 
domesticated animals are only facsimiles of the 
instinctive means whereby their wild ancestors sur- 

[57] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

vived in the struggle for existence by evading 
unequal combat. 

A dog's exhibition of distress when separated 
from its master and mistress is, again, only the 
working of the strong instinct of the gregarious, 
hunting animal, needing the primary factor of his 
life, namely, a leader to follow. Animals which 
hunt in packs, like the wild dogs, have been able to 
sur^-ive in the struggle for existence simply be- 
cause instinct always taught them in no circum- 
stances to become separated from the leader of the 
pack. They might change leaders, as a domesti- 
cated dog may change owners ; but, unless its 
instinct has somehow been perverted, a leaderless 
wild dog or an ownerless tame dog ought not to 
know a moment of rest until the great gap in its 
life has been filled. 

Again, all those signs of shamefaced self-con- 
sciousness — as we interpret them in the case of a 
dog who has committed an offense — are habitually 
shown by all dogs, wild, half -wild, or tame, when 
they come into the presence of a more powerful 
animal of whose temper they have reason to be 
doubtful. You may witness the whole performance 
any day in the meeting of a small dog and a big 
dog in the street. Whether the signs are used 
in a cringing advance or a shrinking withdrawal, 
they are exactly the same instinctive motions as 

[ 58 ] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

express fear of a known enemy, and have all 
served their useful purpose in the evolution of the 
race by dissuading the more powerful animal from 
attack. This is also their meaning when a domesti- 
cated dog enters the presence of a master whom 
it has disobeyed. 

To deny memory to the brains of the higher 
animals would be to make their evolution im- 
possible; since their success in the comphcated life 
which follows upon their complex structure de- 
pends many times in the life of each individual 
upon the instinctive power to adapt conduct to 
circumstance. The range of adaptation is limited ; 
but it has sufficed for their needs so far, and its 
chief agent is memory. 

Nor ought we to think it surprising that the 
imprint of any previous experience upon an ani- 
mal's brain should cause it to repeat the conduct 
appropriate to such experience, when we ourselves 
manufacture inanimate machines like gramo- 
phones, which, when the proper " records " are 
given to them, will repeat the whole of a pathetic 
recitation or a comic song. Our ancestors would 
certainly have denied that such things could be 
done without " consciousness." 

Yet at first we must all find it hard to believe 
that the higher animals are unconscious of suffer- 
ing, since they exhibit all the apparent symptoms, 

[59] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

not only of pain at the time, but also of manifest 
dread of its recurrence. 

Such questions as these are often put to me: — 
"Why does a horse go lame, and, when it has a 
gall, shudder all over at the approach of the 
harness? Why does a chased hare turn almost 
black from fear? Why does a dog lick itself if 
stung or hurt, and exhibit terror afterwards when 
it hears a bluebottle buzz? Why does a bird often 
die when robbed of its young? Why that look of 
terror in a chased creature's eye? Why does a 
worm wriggle when being threaded on a hook? 
Why that intense fear depicted in cattle and sheep 
when being driven to the slaughterhouse, and 
endless other instances ? " 

These nine questions may be taken as a fair 
sample of the phenomena which may be quoted by 
many readers as obstacles to acceptance of the 
belief that animals, other than man, are uncon- 
scious of " suffering " ; and in answering them 
one by one, I may be able to show how deceptive 
to the human point of view such appearances 
may be. 

With regard to the first question : a horse goes 
lame, because it inherits the useful and natural 
instinct to tread as lightly as possible with an 
injured limb — the nerves telegraphing the fact of 
injury to the brain — and to throw as much of its 

[60] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

weight as possible upon the sound ones. Thus its 
gait becomes unequal, but the injured limb has 
comparative rest and a chance of recovery. In 
human lameness this is also the meaning of the 
limp. That we are conscious at the same time of 
feeling pain has nothing to do with It, although 
it really seems to us that it is the consciousness of 
pain which makes us limp. 

With regard to the second question the wincing 
of a galled horse at the touch, or the approach, 
of the harness which has galled it, is merely the 
play of another useful instinct which all animals 
have inherited from their ancestors to avoid the 
aggravation of an existing wound, although har- 
ness and galls caused thereby were, of course, 
unknown in the ages when the instinct was ac- 
quired. 

Insects were doubtless then the chief agents 
which by persistent attacks upon a tender spot 
caused troublesome superficial wounds ; and it is 
interesting to observe that to meet this danger the 
ancestors of the horse acquired a special instinc- 
tive habit, that of making their skins shiver when 
an attack was felt or apprehended, thus shaking 
or warding off the insects. You may see them do 
this several times a minute in the summer. 

In reply to the third question I do not think 
that chased hares — although they may be fatally 

[61] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

exhausted — ever turn black through fear. On the 
contrary, I have often been astonished at the 
inconsequent way in which they will begin to nib- 
ble herbage even while listening to hear if the 
danger is past. This is explained by the fact that 
very narrow escapes from danger constitute a 
large part of the ordinary lives of all animals 
which are preyed upon by others. 

In any wild country you can seldom walk a mile 
without seeing more than one bird of prey. It 
may take you twenty minutes to walk that mile. 
Therefore in the twelve hours of daylight all the 
eatable creatures in every mile of country must be 
scared more — probably many more — -than thirty- 
six times by birds of prey. In addition, there are 
reptiles and beasts of prey always on the prowl, 
by day and night. Which of us, in such circum- 
stances, would think life worth living? 

Luckily for the other creatures they do not 
think about it; and to them a danger past is an 
incident done with, except in so far as they grow 
cunning by experience. 

The fourth question, why a dog licks itself, if 
stung or hurt, is answered simply by the fact that 
it has an inherited instinct to do so, based upon the 
curative effect of its cleansing saliva, although it 
knows nothing of this. Its nerves inform its brain 
of the injury and its brain automatically directs 

[62] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

its muscles to the proper line of conduct. This is 
the means by which all animal actions are per- 
formed, and no argument as to consciousness or 
reason can be based upon them. 

Again the reason why — in answer to the fifth 
question — a dog which has once been stung by a 
wasp may exhibit symptoms of fear when it merely 
hears the buzzing of a bluebottle, is simply that 
all animals have inherited the useful and natural 
instinct to avoid that which has been found to be 
injurious. Without this instinct no race of crea- 
tures could continue to exist ; but there is no need 
to suppose that the creatures are conscious of 
their reason for avoiding that which has been 
found to be injurious. To seek what suits them 
and to reject what does not, is the fundamental 
principle of life among plants as well as animals ; 
and there is no ground for assuming that an ani- 
mal has consciousness because, when it has been 
stung by a wasp, its brain retains a record of 
antipathy against all buzzing insects. 

The sixth question — why a bird often dies when 
robbed of its young — does not need answering; 
because our common experience teaches that birds 
do not die from that cause. 

Indeed, the indifference of birds to the loss of 
their young, their eggs, or their mates, would be 
amazing if we could not see how useful this habit 
[63] 



THE EZLIGIOX or ^'AT^EZ 

of indifference must be to the race. Supposing 
that only a single pair of ravens or eagles are 
known to breed in a large tract of wild country, 
and one of the pair is shot : the survivor will re- 
turn in a very few days with a new mate, though 
where the third bird comes from is always a 
mystery. 

When a pair of woodpigeons are robbed of their 
unfledged squabs, they only go to nest again the 
sooner. 

From the natural point of view we can see the 
beauty of this indifference to domestic bereave- 
ment. It is good for the race that when the first 
effort of reproduction has failed, a second should 
be made without delay. From the human point 
of view, on the other hand, such conduct seems 
callous and wrong; and we are readier to beheve 
that birds mope and die when they lose their 
young, because it harmonizes with our fake ideals 
of nature. 

"Why that look of terror in a chased creature's 
eye.^^ is the seventh question: and tliis is based 
on the mistaken idea that the eye expresses emo- 
tions. The eye does not change ; and the emotions 
which we connect with it — the wide eyehds of ter- 
ror, the brow-darkened eve of anorer, the narrowed 
eye of merriment, and so on — are all expressed 
by the play of the facial muscles, which have each 

[ 61 ] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

their utilitarian meaning and origin. So, if a 
hunted creature shows the whites of its eyes as it 
flees, this merely means that instinct teaches it to 
look backwards as much as possible without check- 
ing its flight. 

Because we should be conscious of terror in 
like case is no reason for presuming that animals, 
which spend their lives in alternate spells of panic 
and quiet grazing, are similarly conscious of 
knowing that they suff'er the pangs of fear. Ex- 
periences that might wreck a human being's nerves 
for the rest of his life are matters of everyday 
occurrence to wild things. 

" Why does a worm wriggle when being 
threaded on a hook? " For the same reason, of 
course, that it wriggles with equal violence when 
it is held so gently as not to injure it at all, but 
merely to restrain it. It has the instinct of self- 
preservation, implanted in it for the good of the 
race ; and a race of worms which did not wriggle 
with all their might when held in restraint or in- 
jured, would soon become extinct. 

The ninth and last question presupposes an 
uncanny amount of intelligence on the part of 
cattle and sheep, because it implies that, when 
they are being driven to the slaughterhouse they 
know what is in store for them. Of course they do 
not ; and on Blackf riars Bridge, in London, I have 

[65] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

often seen large flocks of sheep being driven to the 
slaughterhouse. There is certainly no sign of 
prophetic fear on their part. On the contrary, 
the contented ease with which they allow them- 
selves to be shepherded out of the way of omni- 
buses is only surpassed in interest by the keenness 
with which they adapt themselves to their new sur- 
roundings and hunt along the gutters, when they 
have the chance, for banana-skins or anything else 
which might be eatable. 

Cattle, I admit, have almost always a scared 
look when they are being driven through the 
streets, but what can you expect from creatures 
whose lives are entirely guided by the instinct of 
self-preservation for the good of the race — though 
they do not know it — when they are suddenly 
transported from quiet pastures, where they have 
been accustomed to see nothing more alarming 
than skylarks and hares, to streets roaring with 
traffic and crowded with men hurrying on all 
sides ? 

With wide eyes gazing in every direction and 
wide nostrils sniffing up a score of strange and 
mysterious scents, they are obeying their natural, 
overruling instinct to save their lives if they can. 
But above the roar of the traffic comes the drover's 
familiar shout of command, and the great beasts 
lumber on. It has always been good for them, if 

[66] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

they would avoid thwacks, to obey the drover's 
voice; so they obey it still, automatically.. 

I have taken these nine questions one by one, as 
a fair sample of the obstacles which those who 
have not investigated this subject from a scientific 
point of view, encounter when they try to realize 
that there may be a wide gulf between the emo- 
tions of men and those of other animals. 

We have been so accustomed by mental habits 
ingrained in the race in the days before the great 
truth of evolution was discovered, to interpret 
nature from the human point of view, that we find 
great difficulty in adjusting our mental vision to 
the new perspective which scientific accuracy de- 
mands. 

It is especially in connection with the behavior 
of favorite horses, dogs, and cats that we find it 
difficult to realize that they act unconsciously. 
Yet every creature has the natural instinct to 
do the best that it can for itself and therefore 
it is natural that horse, dog, or cat should repay 
us for the supply of food and for other acts of 
kindness by evident liking for our company and 
for our caresses. This is the ordinary limit to the 
friendly relations subsisting between horses, dogs, 
or cats and their human owners ; and there is 
nothing whatever in it which cannot at once be 
understood as the working of an animal's natural 

[67] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

instinct to do the best for itself, because this habit 
has worked down through its ancestors for the 
good of the race. The animal is, of course, quite 
unconscious of the meaning of its conduct. With 
all our learning we, human beings, could not 
understand it until Darwin unlocked the door of 
knowledge of evolution. 

But although the affection of domestic animals 
for man may ordinarily be limited as above, all 
readers who are really fond of horses, dogs, or 
cats know that sometimes it seems to go much 
further. They see nobility of character in the 
horse which, though a timid animal by nature, will 
brave any peril in its master's service. They see 
even greater nobility in the character of the dog, 
which, in spite of ill-usage often, will follow its 
owner faithfully to the end, even refusing per- 
haps to leave his grave. In the cat, too, they see 
pathetic devotion when it returns over long dis- 
tances, footsore, weary, and hungry, to its old 
home. 

Yet it is only because we insist upon looking at 
the actions of animals from the human point of 
view that such conduct appears to transcend the 
limits of mere animal instincts. Scientifically re- 
garded, it furnishes us instead with evidence of 
instinct's limitations. 

Take the case of the horse, for instance. As a 

[ 68 ] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

gregarious animal, whose ancestors lived for ages 
in herds accustomed to act in unison upon a warn- 
ing given, the dominant instinct of the horse is to 
obey its leader blindly and unquestioningly. By 
domestication and training the horse is taught to 
transfer this allegiance to man, whose guidance it 
will follow into the roar of battle as unhesitatingly 
as its wild ancestor would have followed its leader 
over a precipice. 

Sometimes, indeed, when a number of horses 
are together, the old wild instinct to obey the 
leadership of their own kind will reassert itself in a 
disastrous stampede, when in a moment all their 
acquired obedience to man is thrown to the winds, 
and even the well-trained mounts of a whole 
cavalry corps will rush headlong through the 
crowded camp. Injuring themselves and everything 
that they encounter, just in the old way when the 
beat of flying hoofs told their ancestors that 
helter-skelter, foUow-my-leader flight over the 
open plain was the only way to escape from the 
pursuing wolves. 

In this respect the dog is a more reliable " friend 
of man," because his natural instincts are, like 
ours, those of a hunting animal, involving much 
more complex obedience and assistance to the 
leaders of the pack. 

And this throws a very interesting light upon 

[69] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

the otherwise inexplicable phase of canine devo- 
tion to a bad master. Everyone must have had oc- 
casion to notice that a dog is often peculiarly 
devoted to an owner who ill-uses it. Dickens has 
illustrated this well in the relations between Bill 
Sikes and his cur. 

The reason of it is, of course, that the leader of 
the pack of the dog's wild ancestors only kept his 
place by his readiness and ability to fall upon any 
other member of the pack who incurred his slight- 
est displeasure. The more tyrannical his conduct, 
the more fawning became the submission of the 
rest. You may see this process at work for the 
good of the race — because thus the strongest and 
most cruel become the type of the hunting animal 
— among the packs of pariah dogs in India. 

By the light of the foregoing we understand, 
too, the third curious phenomenon of domestica- 
tion referred to above, namely, the contrast be- 
tween the devotion of a dog to its master, and that 
of a cat to the place where it lives. If a man, own- 
ing both a dog and a cat, were to remove from 
his home to another house, say, half a mile away, 
taking only the cat with him, and if both animals 
were let loose at the same time, it is more than 
likely that they would actually pass each other on 
the road, the dog going to rejoin its old master 
and the cat returning to its old home. 
[70] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

The reason of this is that, while the dog is 
descended from a roving, gregarious animal, and 
has transferred to its human owner the allegiance 
which its ancestors always gave to their leader; 
the cat is descended from a wild animal of solitary 
habits, which depended for safety upon the pos- 
session of a lair to which it could always retire to 
rest for the day. 

In a state of nature the central fact of a wild 
dog's roving life was a leader to follow, that of a 
wild cat's existence a safe den to retire to ; and 
to-day the dog will follow its human leader where- 
ever he goes, but the cat will return to its home. 
If we try to read conscious human emotions into 
their conduct, we cannot explain the contradiction ; 
but regarding it as the automatic result of in- 
herited instinct, it appears perfectly natural. This 
is only a passing illustration, but it will serve to 
show how much knowledge of nature lies open to 
us if we can only persuade ourselves to view the 
phenomena of nature from the natural — i.e.^ not 
the civilized human — point of view. 

And, viewing the conduct of the higher animals, 
the least observant of us must often be forced to 
conclude that they have no sensibility at all. 

A terrier will tear himself repeatedly among 
thorns in pursuit of a rabbit, and still be keen to 
enter them. 

[71] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

If liis back itches he will rub it into a sore, and 
continue to rub the sore whenever he has nothing 
else to think of, until he has caused a wound that 
makes one shudder to look at. Yet he goes on 
rubbing the bleeding flesh all the same. Evidently 
the instinct which should impel him not to aggra- 
vate the wound is altogether obliterated by the 
instinct which impels him to ease an itching spot 
by rubbing. 

I have seen a monkey who, through sheer ennui, 
ate his tail inch by inch; and I have stood before 
his cage watching him nibble at its bleeding stump, 
until I felt quite certain that in the satisfaction of 
his instinct to be always busy his instinctive aver- 
sion to injury — which a human mind would trans- 
late into terms of " pain '' — was at rest. Nor was 
this in any way a case of deranged intellect on 
the part of an individual monkey ; because it is 
well known to practical naturalists that there are 
certain kinds of monkeys — especially those known 
as " Jews " and " Bonnets " — which are not worth 
the trouble of keeping, simply because they will 
nibble their own tails. 

I could multiply instances ; but my point is 
merely to show that whereas it is only in exciting 
moments that man ceases to be conscious of mental 
pain, and is thus thrown down for the instant to 
the level which other animals always occupy, they 

[72] 



ACTIONS OF ANIMALS EXPLAINED 

instinctively resent injury to their bodies as much 
as we do, and express their instinct in very similar 
fashion, yet almost any other instinct seems strong- 
enough to make them neglect the injury — as when 
a monkey, or a dog, or a dormouse, or a parrot, 
will lacerate its own live flesh for want of some- 
thing better to do. 



[73] 



V 
SOME POPULAR ERRORS 



Nature and truth are one, and immutable and inseparable 
as beauty and love. — Mrs. Jamieson. 



CHAPTER V 

SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

Fairy Stories — Small Birds and the Cuckoo — " God's Cock 
and Hen" — Naturalist Storytellers — Dog and Boy — 
Cleverness of Dogs— " The Cad" and "The Jester"— 
"Tears of Anguish "—Prescient Cattle— The Working 
of Old Instinct — Misleading " Science " — Brushing Cows 
— Horse and Burning Stable — Moaning of Dog — Intelli- 
gence of a Cock — A Dog's "Remorse" — Hooked Fish. 

The most fruitful source of the difficulty which 
we all encounter in trying to take a right view of 
animal life is perhaps the nursery fairy story. I 
do not refer so much to avowed fairy stories like 
" Puss in Boots '' — which illustrates, by the way, 
how a cat by cunning thefts and shameless lying 
won a fortune and " happiness ever after '' for its 
master ! — or Little Red Riding Hood — the moral 
of which appears to be that your grandmother 
may be eaten by a wolf and welcome so long as 
you escape yourself — as to the stories full of 
worked-up sentiment about robins and other fa- 
miliar birds, written with the good intention, no 
doubt, of making children kind and sympathetic 
towards wild life, but at the same time starting 

[77] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE ^^\ 

them in life with the totally wrong impression that 
small birds and other animals act and think and 
talk to each other like human beings. 

Such notions, acquired in the nursery, remain at 
the back of one's mind all the rest of one's life: 
and it is only by a resolute effort of reason that 
one can force one's self to see nothing " un- 
natural " in the conduct of a small bird which takes 
no notice of its own children, sprawhng and starv- 
ing slowly by the side of its nest, while it stuffs 
the solitary young cuckoo who threw them out. 

To us this seems " unnatural," because it is 
contrary to our nature — we being well able to 
succor our infants when they get into trouble — 
but if we recognize the truth, that the birds have 
not human sentiments, this abandonment of their 
unlucky young dovetails admirably into the 
scheme of nature. Yet, so far as it concerns the 
young small birds thrown out by young cuckoos, 
it is one of " nature's mistakes." As with the gray 
moths which " hide " on black palings, nature has 
not yet been able to teach the small birds to dis- 
criminate. The parasitic habits of the cuckoo are 
too new for instinctive habits of defense to have 
been acquired yet by its victims. 

The day may yet come when small birds, on 
finding a struggle going on in their nest, will 
throw out the aggressor and so save their own 
[78] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

young. But there is no sign of the fortunate 
beginning of such a habit yet, although it is 
evident from the partly formed habit of the cuckoo 
to lay eggs resembling those of small birds, that 
the latter are beginning to defend themselves a 
little; for the cuckoo would not have acquired 
this peculiar power, if the small birds accepted the 
strange egg always without question. Once the 
egg is hatched, however, they can still only act 
upon nature's general principle that it is a waste 
of time and labor, which might be used in the 
interest of the race, to attempt to succor a newly- 
hatched bird which has fallen out of the nest. 

Thus nature seems to us to be at war with 
" herself " — taking advantage in the cuckoo of 
" her " own defective rule in the matter of the 
small birds' parental instincts — and it is a fruitful 
source of error in our views of the world around us 
that we will persist in thus regarding " nature " 
as a sort of personage — an uncanonical Providence 
— who arranges things at large for the good of 
the greatest number. What we should realize is 
that nature is different and separate in every liv- 
ing thing. A creature may become extinct because 
its nature is not up-to-date; and in the matter of 
the cuckoo and the small birds, it is quite possible 
that in the long run the small birds will win and 
the cuckoo will become extinct, though perhaps 

[79] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

some of its more gullible victims will become ex- 
tinct first. 

To return, however, to the animal fairy story ; 
most of our popular traditions about wild life are 
really of this class. The other day I was taken to 
task by an old lady for informing a correspondent 
that the wren is not the female robin. The old 
lady had been taught at school that the wren was 
the female robin, and she had loved the birds all 
her hfe under that impression. No doubt the old 
saying, " The robin and the wren are God's cock 
and hen," coupled with the fact that young robins 
are mottled and brownish, hke wrens, was at the 
bottom of the error ; but you cannot expect people 
to take a scientific view of nature, when their 
minds are biased by the well-intentioned nonsense 
of the nursery. 

And the worst of it is that the fairy story about 
animals — endowing them with a complete set of 
human emotions and touching language to express 
them in — has become exceedingly popular of late. 
It pays better than any other kind of nature- 
writing; because parents, having delightful recol- 
lections of the pleasure which they derived in 
nursery days from stories of Cock Robin and 
Jenny Wren, and so on, are never tired of buying 
such gift-books for the young. 

In America the state of things is worse. There 

[80] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

a whole school of " Nature-study " advocates has 
arisen, mainly encouraged by certain books of 
fairy stories about animals, whose aims and ideals 
are not only unscientific, but deliberately anti- 
scientific. Although the plain unvarnished facts 
of nature, truly told in simple language, can be 
made to possess a satisfying interest such as these 
romances must always lack, it is easier for a skilled 
writer with a limited supply of facts, to make a 
thrilling story, full of human emotions, about a 
hedgehog or a lynx or a wild duck. Yet the effect 
upon the minds of readers is that they look upon 
nature through so distorting a medium that every 
step of inquiry thereafter leads them blundering 
into quagmires of doubt. 

Now " nature-study " must be undertaken in 
the scientific spirit of the searcher after truth, 
or it is of no value whatever ; and it is not possible 
to calculate the harm which these fairy-stories 
about animals are doing. A child — or a grown-up 
person — who reads these tragedies or comedies of 
animal life, told with infinite skill and invested with 
a false halo of human sentiment, becomes almost 
mentally incapable of understanding any truth of 
nature with which he may be confronted. 

Accustomed always to regard animals as actu- 
ated by human motives, they cannot understand — 
to take an instance — that the shamefacedness of a 

[81] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

dog which has done wrong is not exactly the same 
as that of a boy in Hke case. It is only the same in 
so far as each has done that which gives offense to 
a more powerful animal (its master in the case of 
a dog, its schoolmaster or parent in the case of 
the boy) and each dreads the consequences. 

But here comes in the difference between the 
human being and the mere animal. If the boy 
knows that what he did was morally right, al- 
though it was a breach of the rules, he holds his 
head high. Even if he is punished he is proud of 
it. The dog cannot think about its own thoughts. 
The offense against the rules is plain, and that is 
all that it can see, and it takes its punishment, Hke 
a dog, as a matter of cause and effect. 

That a dog's mind can make such connections of 
ideas and trace the relation of cause to effect, no 
one should attempt to deny: but it can do this 
without being at all self-conscious of the fact that 
it is exercising reasoning power. 

I will quote a couple of instances which have 
been related to me in this connection, to show how 
easy it is to mistake mere animal instincts for hu- 
man intelligence: in one case, of an old and slow 
dog which, when its younger and swifter com- 
panion started after a cat, did not fatigue itself 
in hopeless pursuit, but went straight to a gap 
through which the cat must return; and, in the 

[82] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

other case, of a fox-terrier, which accidentally 
rang the bell one day, bringing the servant to 
the door, and afterwards used to ring on purpose 
when it wanted to be let out. 

I call both of these actions " instinctive " (for 
want of a better word) because, although they are 
undoubtedly " clever," they do not go beyond the 
animal's natural power of taking the best advan- 
tage of a connection of ideas. The return of the 
cat through the gap had been witnessed before: 
therefore it was to the gap that the slow dog, with 
all the inherited cunning of a hunting animal, 
went to wait for it. The opening of the door had 
been observed to follow the ringing of the bell ; 
therefore the dog, knowing how to ring the bell, 
procured the opening of the door. 

From my own experience I can tell a story of 
even greater cleverness, I think, on the part of a 
dog. 

I had two fox-terrier pups, brothers. One was a 
clever little dog, like its mother, whom I called 
" The Jester " ; the other was larger, a strong, 
stupid, and ugly dog, like its father. It was called 
" The Cad." A small bowl of food was brought 
always for " The Jester," and a larger one for 
" The Cad " ; but in India where this happened 
dogs lead exciting lives and often the meal was 
interrupted by hot pursuits of sneaking pariah 

[83] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

dogs which came sniffing round the veranda. In 
these pursuits " The Jester," being small, was 
always left far behind, and, returning first, used 
to manage to get a mouthful or two from the 
wrong bowl before " The Cad " came swaggering 
back, after discomfiting the enemy. 

Thus " The Jester " learned the trick, whenever 
the dinner was brought, of raising a false alarm, 
by rushing around the veranda, barking at noth- 
ing. At once " The Cad " was agog for war and, 
following his brother's treacherous clue, dashed 
across the compound in search of the non-existent 
enemy — while " The Jester " hurried back and 
gulped down as much as he could of his brother's 
dinner. 

This was repeated daily; but the big dog, up 
to the time of his death — for both were carried 
off by an epidemic of dumb rabies which raged 
through Lahore — never discovered the trick that 
was daily played upon him. 

And it was a useless trick after all; because 
there was always plenty for both, and the little 
dog's appetite was soon satisfied, so that when the 
big one had finished what was left in his own bowl 
he could turn to the other untouched bowl and 
eat his fill from that. 

I have come across no other case which, to my 
mind, so satisfactorily exemphfies at once the ex- 

[84] 



SOME POPULAR ERROES 

tent and the limitations of what I call " instinc- 
tive " cleverness. 

The little dog, it seems to me, had enough brains 
to use guile in order to decoy the big one away 
from its dinner; but not enough to sit in judg- 
ment on its own conduct and reahze, not only that 
it was a sneak and a thief, but that it gained noth- 
ing in the end by sneaking and thieving. It was 
its instinct to be as clever as it could in getting 
food. 

A human being would have recognized his duty 
to his brother, as well as the fact that, where there 
was plenty for both, it would have been much 
more sensible to eat his own dinner quietly and in 
comfort. 

Having now for some time made no secret of 
my belief as to the feelings of animals, I have 
naturally become the recipient of letters which 
illustrate various kinds of popular error on the 
subject. One correspondent writes, for instance, 
describing an accident which happened to a bul- 
lock causing " tears of anguish " to come from its 
eyes. But for incidents like this, my correspondent 
says, he would be able to accept the theory that 
animals do not know that they " suffer " ; and can 
I explain why, if the bullock was not conscious of 
suffering, it shed " tears of anguish " ? 

Now, the repetition of that phrase, " tears of 
[85] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

anguish," shows how difficult it is for us to think 
on new Hnes. 

Of course, if the bullock's tears were tears of 
conscious anguish, there is an end to the argu- 
ment ; but, as I have been at some pains to show, 
all our human expressions of emotion are utilita- 
rian in origin. Our smiles are by origin merely 
the relaxation of muscles previously taut in readi- 
ness for self-defense with the teeth; and our 
frowns merely the automatic drawing down of 
shaggy eyebrows to protect the eyes in combat. 

Our tears are utilitarian also by origin, and 
probably analogous to perspiration. They reheve 
the brain from sudden pressure, as perspiration 
relieves the body. We, human beings, associate 
them with " anguish," because that is ordinarily 
our conscious feeling when tears are flowing, but 
we may also shed tears from laughter, or from 
sneezing, or from a bad cold. In each case they 
give relief from pressure on the brain by emptying 
the space from which they come; and the tears 
shed by the bullock in the story served the same 
purpose. To describe them, however, as " tears of 
anguish " is to beg the whole question. 

Some correspondents go even further and 
attribute to animals not only the consciousness of 
trouble, but also some mysterious foreknowledge 
of it. Thus one writes : — " Have you, Sir, ever 

[86] 



SOME POPULAR E R Jl O R S 

tried to drive an ox into a slaughter-house? I 
have often, done so, and have been convinced that 
the reluctance of the animal to enter arose from 
its knowing, by some wonderful power, what would 
happen to it therein." 

As a matter of fact, I have never tried to drive 
an ox into a slaughter-house, but I have seen them 
driven; ivud sometimes they will go in uncon- 
cernedly, or even gladly, to escape the noise and 
hustling outside. At other times they shrink back 
from the entrance in such a way that a sympa- 
thetic observer may be excused from crediting 
them with foreknowledge of their fate. 

Once, indeed, I suggested this to a drover, who 
was perspiring from his efforts to force a number 
of reluctant bullocks through the gate; but his 
opinion was that it was just as difficult to drive 
stock into a new bullock-shed on a farm as into a 
slaughter-house. To them, as hunted animals by 
ancestry, the unknown is always terrible ; and they 
dread entering where exit seems barred and every- 
thing is strange to them. 

On the other hand, it must often happen, of 
course, that there may be some smell of blood 
lingering about a slaughter-house; in which case 
no one could expect cattle to go in without great 
compulsion. 

Wild instincts die hard in our domesticated 

[87] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

animals ; and when the vermin-killer has reaped — 
or, rather, scattered — his usual crop of poisoned 
rats, the perturbation of the cattle is sometimes 
great. When the ancestors of our cows were wild 
— so long ago that we hardly guess who their 
ancestors were — life-saving instinct taught them 
to become furious and crowd together at the scent 
of blood. For blood on the grass or a corpse on 
the track meant the near presence of the dreaded 
tiger; and only in close order with hysteric rage 
could they trample the striped fiend into the earth. 

Centuries upon centuries of lives of sloth passed 
uneventfully between pasture, stall, and milking- 
shed have not robbed them of this fierce, wild 
instinct. So now, you will often hear that strange, 
low bellow by which a bull or cow announces the 
discovery of death in the way, and see the herd 
galloping together at the summons, and then 
standing, uncertain, gazing at the beast which 
raised the alarm, while for the space of several 
minutes it carefully and critically sniffs up the 
odors of a dead rat which the crows have torn 
open. Surely, then, it is not necessaiy to credit 
an ox with the gift of mysterious foreknowledge 
of death, if it sometimes displays reluctance to 
enter premises tainted with blood? 

Of course, the most dangerous class of popular 
errors are those which are propagated by writers 
[88] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

of great scientific repute, who, being engrossed 
in the work of discovering proofs of human in- 
telHgence in insects, do not pause to discover that 
the facts upon which these proofs are based do 
not exist. In the schools where " nature-study '' 
is made a speciahty, he who would dispute certain 
authoritative dogmas about the reasoning powers 
of ants and so on would be only a futile voice cry- 
ing in the wilderness. Yet in these schools are 
being educated the men and women of the next 
generation. 

Another very fruitful source of popular error 
is the newspaper paragraph, cleverly written from 
facts by a journalist who knows little or nothing 
of natural science, and consequently jumps to 
absurd conclusions. 

A paragraph of this kind lately went round the 
press, describing how a wounded partridge had 
sagaciously plucked feathers from its own breast 
and had carefully laid them upon its injured leg 
in such a way that the soft ends alone covered the 
injured part. 

I obtained, however, a photograph of the 
" bandaged " leg, showing that what had mani- 
festly happened in the case was merely that the 
ends of some of the body feathers stuck to the 
bleeding wound every time the bird squatted to 
rest. 

[89] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

Yet, by jumping to the conclusion that the bird 
had bandaged its own wound, the reporter of the 
incident to the papers has doubtless imbued 
thousands of readers with the idea that a bird 
knows how to select material for bandaging a 
wound and how to apply it skillfully. It is the 
circulation of tales like this which makes it so 
difficult for the average reader to get a proper 
understanding of nature. 

It is only because almost all literature on the 
subject of nature is so tainted with this false hu- 
man sentiment that I receive so many letters from 
unknown correspondents, asking for explanations 
of simple phenomena, which they would find no 
difficulty in explaining for themselves, if they 
could look at the matter from the right point of 
view. 

I will quote an instance or two. One correspon- 
dent wrote : — " During the winter I brushed four 
of five cows that I saw occasionally only for an 
hour or so at the week-ends. I soon noticed this : 
that they asked for it, and as soon as I got the 
brush would strike each other with their horns to 
be first brushed; one, a red one, was so masterful 
and skillful in horning the others' ribs that I had 
to brush her first, and tie her up while the others 
had their turn. Now if these cows did not feel 
pleased with the brushing, would they have strug- 

[90] 



SOME POPUL.AR ERRORS 

gled to be brushed? The expression of their faces 
of perfect satisfaction was unmistakable, also the 
way they asked for more and more, even when I 
was aching with the vigorous exercise." 

The answer to this is that there is no need to 
suppose that the cows knew that they felt pleased 
with the brushing. This was good for them, and 
their instinct guided them to seek it, ill-using each 
other if necessary in order to get a larger share 
of it. But this is only the same action which 
flowers perform when they spread their petals 
wide and thrust themselves above each other to 
get as much of the good sunlight as they can. 

The converse of the action is shown in the con- 
duct of the cows which retired to the background 
when " horned in the ribs," and of the Sensitive 
Plant which shrinks from a touch. 

But we need not, either in the case of the animal 
or the plant, pre-suppose self-conscious knowledge 
of the meaning of these useful actions. 

Another correspondent wrote : — " I am a con- 
firmed believer of your theory about animals not 
suffering conscious pain ; but one point I would 
like to be enlightened upon is why a horse cannot 
be led out of a burning stable unless blindfolded. 
Yet another case which off^ers difficulty is why a 
dog, when prostrated with some internal disease, 
moans. It was formerly a gregarious animal, and 

[91] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE f 

if hurt, would howl for help ; but moaning would 
serve no such purpose in the case of internal 
disease." 

When a horse refuses to be led out of a burning 
stable, so long as it can see the flames, it is because 
in moments of panic the old wild instinct to flee 
from danger rises above the acquired habit of 
obedience to man, and it refuses to be led past the 
flames. When bhndfolded it finds one direction as 
good as another, and submits to be led. 

When a dog which is ill moans it merely follows 
the gregarious instinct to attract the attention of 
comrades to its distress. The dog cannot consider 
the meaning of its own actions, and, even if it 
could, nature has not given it the power of dis- 
tinguishing between those kinds of distress which 
comrades can relieve and those which they cannot. 
Even human beings instinctively weep when dis- 
tressed, without the slightest conscious knowledge 
of the proper and original meaning of their 
lamentation. 

A third correspondent sent an interesting ac- 
count of what he took to be reasoning on the part 
of a cock. It occurred during a fight between a 
white Leghorn and a dark cross-bred bird: — 

" Finding himself getting the worst of it, the 
dark cock turned and ran for a holly-bush, whose 
branches grew within five or six inches of the 

[92] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

ground. Ducking under the branches himself, he 
came out on the other side of the bush. The white 
cock, coming full tilt after the other, was caught 
by the branches and sent head over heels by the 
springiness of the branches, and was barely on his 
feet when the dark one came round the bush and 
attacked him again. This same trick was repeated 
ten or a dozen times, and invariably with the same 
result, until the white cock was completely 
' knocked out of time.' " 

Bearing in mind that our poultry are descended 
from jungle fowl, it might not be unreasonable to 
suppose that they inherit a certain adroitness of 
intellect in taking advantage in their frequent 
combats of such obstructions as branches of trees 
may offer ; but I think that in this instance the 
bird was actuated by the simpler motive which we 
may see at work any day now in the fights of 
partridges in the fields. 

When one bird bolts and the other pursues the 
fugitive has a good view of the ground ahead, and 
easily gets over clods of earth, ruts, and other 
obstacles. The pursuer, with his eyes fixed upon 
his enemy, often stumbles over these, thus losing 
ground; and the instant that he stops the other 
is ready to turn upon him. Thus the fight nearly 
always consists of absurd alternations of flight 
and pursuit on the part of the two birds. 

[93] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

Similarly, in the fight between two cocks, 
described above, the fugitive immediately became 
the assailant on finding the pursuer checked, and 
he naturally followed tactics which had answered 
so well time after time. Yet we can hardly credit 
him with sufficient intelligence to have designed the 
trap for his opponent deliberately, since the other 
— a bird of the same species — had not sufficient 
intelligence after two or three experiences to duck 
his head when he came to the bush. 

Here is yet another letter : — " When I was a 
small boy my brother bought a spaniel, which, on 
arriving at our house, proved to be so savage that 
it was necessarily chained up in an outhouse. So 
vicious was it indeed, that the person who fed it 
(I remember) put on leather woodcutter's gloves 
before venturing to push the bowl of food within 
the dog's reach. After having been chained up 
for several days, somehow ' Dash ' managed to 
break loose, and came into the kitchen with the 
other dogs. Seeing him there, I thoughtlessly 
patted him on the head. Instantly with a growl, 
he sprang up and seized me by the arm. Having 
on an apron with long sleeves I fortunately was 
able to pull myself free without hurt, and bolted 
into the back yard. Finding ' Dash ' did not 
follow up the attack, I went to a water-trough and 
began washing my hands. Presently, on looking 

[94] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

round, I was horrified at seeing him coming slowly 
towards me. ' Now,' thought I, ' he's coming to 
finish me oflP.' But, strange to say, as he drew near 
he began wagging his tail; then, crouching down 
at my feet, rolled over on his side and looked up in 
my face with an expression which said as plainly 
as possible, ' I'm so sorry I behaved as I did just 
now ! Please to forgive me ! ' It was some time 
before I could summon courage to touch him. 
But when I did poor ' Dash ' showed unmistakable 
signs of joy, dancing round and putting his paws 
upon me in the most demonstrative manner. Ever 
afterwards we were the best of friends, and he 
never again seemed to have any return of his 
former ill-temper. Now, Sir, whether dogs reason 
or not, the foregoing incident shows plainly to 
my mind that ' Dash ' was capable of feeling 
remorse and forming a determination to make 
amends for the past, which seems very like what 
we term moral feeling — and morality would seem 
even a step in advance of the reasoning faculty. 
Is It not so.? " 

In this case it is not at all necessary to credit 
the dog with remorse, but merely with change of 
mood. Of course, " Dash's " later behavior was 
that which Is natural to a spaniel, and he had prob- 
ably been very much teased before to make him 
so bad-tempered for a while. His return to the 
[95] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

fawning ways natural to a spaniel on finding that 
he was not ill-used for snapping was sudden, but 
that is always characteristic of animals' changes 
of mood, when one natural instinct overcomes and 
replaces another. 

So far I have dealt only with errors which are 
liable to arise in our minds from our natural 
tendency to look at things from the human point 
of view — a tendency which has been mischievously 
encouraged by nursery teaching, by popular 
" nature " writing, and by many scientific 
authorities. 

It is possible, however, to fall into error on the 
other side. For instance, several correspondents 
— independent observers of nature to whom my 
conclusions appeal — quote, in support of these, 
instances of hooked fish breaking away but sub- 
sequently taking another bait, with the first hook 
still in their mouths, as evidence that they do not 
feel pain. But it is not real evidence. 

A fish must eat to Hve ; and we may be sure that, 
neither in taking the first bait nor the second, 
did the hooked fish suspect the hook. Something 
indeed must have seemed to be wrong with the first 
mouthful; but it did not satisfy the creature's 
hunger and there was no precedent for supposing 
that the same unpleasant accident — what it was, 
of course, the fish could not imagine — would hap- 

[96] 



SOME POPULAR ERRORS 

pen again. So it would naturally take the next 
tempting mouthful and perhaps be secured with 
the first hook still in its mouth. 

Nor, by the way, would it in any way advance 
my argument, that animals have no self-conscious- 
ness, to suppose that they cannot feel pain. Un- 
doubtedly they feel it, in the sense that their body 
resents it and their brain, as governing their body, 
telegraphs to their muscles to resist and fight 
against it by struggles and, if they are gregarious 
animals, by outcries for help. 

But, though their brain is thus a perfect 
mechanism for defending the body against acci- 
dent and injury, it lacks that power which belongs 
to human beings alone and makes us self-conscious 
judges of our own feelings and actions. And it is 
only because we can sit in judgment upon our own 
feelings that we personally know whether these 
are pleasant or unpleasant. 



[97] 



VI 
THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
LOFC 



There lives and works 
A soul in all things, and that soul is God. 

Cx)wpee's " Task." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

Why Man Alone Has Knowledge of Pain — The Use of 
Suffering — Man Always Finds His Level — Summary of 
the Argument — Evidence that Man Alone is Self- 
Conscious — Language — Self-Decoration — Bowerbirds 
and Motmots — The Religious Sense — How Conscious- 
ness Began — Concerted Action — Bees — Wolves — Rooks' 
" Sentinels " — The Human Foot and its Story — Rising 
by Hardship — Beginning of Concerted Action — Self- 
Restraint and the Moral Sense — Stupendous Conse- 
quences. 

Every animal, as we see it to-day, is the prod- 
uct of its evolution up to date. We can state 
with scientific certainty how most of its attributes 
were acquired by its ancestors. 

No kind of creature can possess any character- 
istic habit or any detail of structure which has 
not been useful to its ancestors. All the apparent 
symptoms of pain and seeming fear of pain which 
animals exhibit can be explained as habits which 
have proved useful to the race in safeguarding its 
members from injury; but what could not be so 
explained would be any self-conscious knowledge 
on their part of " pain " itself, as we feel it. 

[101] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

There is no other animal besides man to whose 
ancestors the real horror of pain that we feel 
could have been useful. On the contrary, there is 
no animal to which it would not have been a serious 
disadvantage in the struggle of existence. 

We, commanding all the resources of our civili- 
zation, are wisely cultivating — as it were — the feel- 
ing of pain to the utmost. There is no trifling 
bodily ailment for which we do not apply — and, as 
a rule, successfully — to the doctor. There is noth- 
ing which shocks us so much as the idea of pain. 
In our middle age, when in a state of nature we 
should be liable to be driven into the background 
by our juniors — ^being probably killed in the pro- 
cess — we are patched and mended by our doctors, 
and we are surrounded with the shield of the law 
in such wise that, wherever you look, you shall see 
the old and feeble among us ruling the young and 
strong. 

We have, in fact, reversed nature's rules of the 
struggle of existence for our own benefit, and the 
chief factor of our success has been the growing 
dislike of mental and physical " suffering " which 
impels civilized men always to surround themselves 
with moral and material safeguards. 

Other animals — I except those which are do- 
mesticated and cared for by man — ^have no safe- 
guards. They must fight always to keep their 
[102] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

place; and nothing could be worse for them than 
to have a nervous dislike of " suffering." The 
avoidance of injury when possible is, of course, 
a cardinal principal of animal existence, but the 
horror of " suffering " could only be a drag upon 
the evolution of any creature other than man. 
We have seen that Kving things, like the Sensitive 
Plant, have acquired the useful habit of shrink- 
ing from a touch, although they have no conscious 
sense of personal suffering; and if other Hving 
things had acquired this sense they could only 
have done so because it was useful to them. 

What, then, is the use of the sense of " suffer- 
ing " and unhappiness .'^ Undoubtedly its use is 
to impel the creature concerned to seek a remedy 
and apply a cure. But animals other than man 
have no means of doing this. Their instinctive 
habits of avoiding and resenting injury exhaust 
their resources In this direction ; and a subsequent 
sense of suffering, which they could not alleviate, 
and unhappiness, which they could not lighten, 
would be a serious drawback to them, unfitting 
them to do their best In the next crisis of the 
struggle of existence. 

Therefore, It Is scientifically certain that such 

animals cannot have acquired a conscious sense of 

suffering; because we know that the lowest 

creatures do not possess it, and It could only have 

[103] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

been introduced into the scheme of nature as an 
" improvement." 

But we have seen that (except in the case of 
human civihzation) it would have been a drawback, 
and not an improvement. Therefore it could not 
have been introduced at all. The first animals 
to exhibit it would have been handicapped in the 
hard struggle of natural existence, and would have 
become extinct. They would have been too " soft." 

With civilized man the case is entirely different. 
He has raised himself above the natural struggle 
of existence and moves on a higher plane, where 
the conscious personal effort to distinguish be- 
tween good and evil and to win happiness by earn- 
ing it, is the sole means by which he rises. For 
him, therefore, the constant spur of suffering and 
discontent has been extremely useful. He is never 
happy or even contented for long. He must al- 
ways be striving to improve his lot and to secure 
the happiness which seems just beyond his reach. 

Thus the races of civilized men have traveled 
far upon an upward road on which no other kind 
of animal has entered. And, as is always the rule 
in nature, the higher we go the swifter becomes 
our progress, and the more keenly we feel the in- 
centives which spur us on. 

Sometimes in the stress of our complicated exis- 
tence and the turmoil of civilization we are in- 
[104] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

clined to envy the savage, who has advanced so 
short a distance above the level of other animals, 
because he finds his food with little labor, needs 
no clothes, and has no worries. 

The savage, moreover, feels pain much less than 
we do, and scarcely knows what it is to be melan- 
choly. The abhorrence of the civilized world for 
slavery was the inevitable outcome of civilized 
modes of thought ; but the slaves — as many sur- 
vivors from that period have admitted — were not 
more unhappy than the free negroes of to-day, 
who have votes and have to earn their own living. 
Thus always we see that even human beings are 
adapted to their environment; and that it is fool- 
ish to invest low creatures with our own civilized 
sensations. These we have acquired as the means 
whereby we rise on our higher plane. 

Thus, to anyone who is impartially observant, 
the conscious sufferings of human beings do not 
constitute a stumbling-block to religious belief. 

In the East and the West, as well as here at 
home in England, I have studied men as I have 
watched the beasts and birds, trying to discover 
from their conduct the solution of this great prob- 
lem; and year by year the conviction grew upon 
me that a human being who is fortunate or un- 
fortunate unconsciously and automatically adapts 
himself to the level of his good or bad fortune, 
[105] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

and that from that point his happiness or unhap- 
piness depends upon what happens next. 

We make the same sort of mistake in looking 
at men and women who have been unfortunate, as 
we do in looking at other animals. We regard 
them from our own particular point of view, which 
throws everything that concerns them out of 
perspective. 

Every reader of these lines has his own stand- 
point on his own level. He envies those who are 
far above him because they seem to have all the 
elements of happiness at command. He pities 
those who are far below him because their lives 
appear sordid and miserable. Every reader will, 
I think, admit this. 

Yet between the very highest and the very low- 
est levels of human life there are a great many 
grades which are envied as " happy " by those 
below, and at the same time are pitied as " un- 
happy '' by those above. The ofBce-boy who turns 
up his collar at Waterloo Station in preparation 
for a wet walk over the windy bridge, envies his 
employer, who jumps into a hansom; while that 
employer, compelled to risk his health and suffer 
discomfort in coming to office in town in all 
weathers, is pitied by his neighbor, a man of 
wealth and leisure. 

But all this has many times been better said 

[106] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

than I can say it. The point upon which I want 
to insist here is that similar grades are to be seen 
from every point of view of human Hfe, but from 
no two points of view are the grades the same. 

For, besides classifying men by their wealth and 
position, you may classify them by their health, by 
their domestic felicity, or by any other scale 
which occurs to you. The result is the same: each 
one envies every one higher up the scale, and pities 
every one below. 

In other words, each one of us measures happi- 
ness and unhappiness by the footrule of his own 
experience; and each time that our experience 
changes we make a new footrule to suit it. 

Go into any old peasant's hovel, any common 
lodging-house, any hospital — and the same amaz- 
ing contrast always strikes you, between the misery 
of the place — as it appears to you — and the con- 
tentment and resignation of its human tenants. 
The fact is that they are all taking their level 
from their experiences of the moment ; and from 
that moment every improvement in their circum- 
stances is happiness and every deterioration is 
unhappiness: and in the life of every man the 
happiness largely prevails because we are all 
hoping to improve our lot, and all meet with some 
success. 

In the common lodging-house the language may 
[107] 



THE RELIGIOX OP NATURE 

be coarse but the jokes are enjoyed. In the hospi- 
tal the smiles may be wan, but the sense of peace 
and hope inspires them. 

There are men, of course, whose temporary 
" misery and agony " are such that they will take 
their own lives rather than endure the torture: 
but I hold that even in such cases a balance-sheet 
of each life would show a large credit on the side 
of happiness, and that even the last madness of 
self-destruction — and the contemplation of the act 
beforehand — was sweetened by anticipation of 
lasting peace beyond the grave. 

I do not believe that positive unhappiness or 
suffering exists in this world. I believe that it is 
all comparative, and that the comparison is al- 
ways in our favor in the long run. 

At the same time I believe that by these alterna- 
tions of happiness and unhappiness we are all 
urged upon a road which leads always upwards; 
and that the advancement and civilization of man 
is entirely due to his pursuit of " happiness," which 
is alwa3\s in some respect just an inch above his 
condition at the moment, no matter what his con- 
dition may be. We all know plenty of people who, 
judged by our standards, ought to be miserable; 
but thej' are not. 

In my own experience I have at times plumbed 
the depths of physical and mental suffering: and 
[108] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

I know that " unhappiness " cannot exist in the 
mind of man as a permanent sentiment. During 
times of suffering and misfortune he finds his 
level almost at once, and thereafter he is buoyed 
with constant hopes of rising. 



Let me sum up my argument before proceeding 
further. It will be remembered that a correspon- 
dent, concealing from the public a well-known 
personality under the name of " Freethinker," 
challenged the right of anyone who studies nature 
to adopt the religious note which he had observed 
in some of my writing, because, as he labored at 
some length to show, the study of nature's ways 
reveals so much cruelty and suffering at every 
step as to be incompatible with belief in a merci- 
ful Creator. 

Now this was no idle statement. The author 
is a man of known ability, a good naturalist, and 
perfectly honest in his opinion that knowledge of 
nature and belief in religion are incompatible. The 
point which he raised was one which has been an 
insuperable stumbling-block to many. 

Nor is there in the works of any theologian or 
man of science such an explanation of the appar- 
ent cruelty in nature as will satisfy a logical mind. 

Now this would be a very terrible state of 
[ 109 ] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

things if it were allowed to continue, because we 
are encouraging nature study in all our schools ; 
and yet, unless an explanation of the cruelty of 
nature is forthcoming, we shall, by means of na- 
ture study, be making it very difficult for all those 
who are guided by reason in their beliefs to grow 
up as religious men or women. Not to put too 
fine a point upon it, unless a direct and logical 
connection between science and religion can be 
estabUshed, we shall be in growing danger of edu- 
cating a nation of atheists and materiahsts. 

But it so happened that, after many years of 
thought given to this subject, I had gradually 
discovered for myself a satisfactory solution of 
the problem ; and so I found myself able to accept 
" Freethinker's " challenge, and to undertake to 
prove that earnest study of nature and true re- 
ligious belief, instead of being antagonistic, are 
really inseparable. 

I based my case upon evidence which proves 
that man alone possesses that gift of conscious- 
ness which causes him to know when he is happy 
or unhappy. 

If all animals possessed it, then all plants must 
possess it, too; because there is no line of dis- 
tinction between the lowest animals and the lowest 
plants, while some of the higher plants exhibit 
sensitiveness, others catch hving food and hold it 
[110] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

tight, and others perform many " clever " actions. 
But it is absurd to credit plants with conscious- 
ness of happiness or unhappiness. Therefore all 
animals cannot possess the gift. 

Next I showed that we cannot draw the line of 
consciousness between plants and such an animal 
as the sea-anemone, which behaves like a plant and 
bears division like a plant. Then, going higher up 
the animal scale I showed that even the most 
striking actions performed by insects, such as 
wasps and ants — actions which have often been 
quoted as evidence of conscious affection and in- 
telligence — are purely instinctive and unintelligent. 
Going higher still I showed that we are wrong to 
credit birds with our own conscious sentiments and 
motives, because, by endeavoring to kill their own 
young after they have reared them, and by taking 
no notice of their own young when these have been 
cast out of the nest, they show that they have not 
the same feelings. 

Lastly I showed that we cannot even credit other 
mammals with consciousness such as we possess, 
because all the actions of horses, dogs, cats, etc., 
which are ordinarily quoted as evidence of such 
consciousness, really prove, when examined, to be 
the outcome of instinct only. Many of these ac- 
tions would not be performed by mammals if they 
were conscious of their purport. 

[Ill] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

I also showed that other animals than man can- 
not possess our consciousness of suffering and un- 
happiness because they can only possess such gifts 
as have been useful to their ancestors. Man pos- 
sesses it because it has been useful in the moral 
evolution of his ancestors ; but to the ancestors 
of other animals it would have been injurious 
rather than useful. Therefore they cannot pos- 
sess it. 

Thus I have shown that in the whole range of 
life from the lowest vegetable up to the highest 
animal there is no point, until we come to man him- 
self, at which we can pause and say, " Here con- 
sciousness begins " ; and without consciousness 
there can be no personal valuation of happiness or 
unhappiness. 

The animal instinctively resists and resents that 
which is bad for it, while it seeks and enjoys what 
it good for it. But, beyond the fact that each ex- 
perience is retained by the memory and used by 
the brain for future guidance, the sensations end 
where they began, because there is no conscious 
personality to weigh up the good and the bad as 
so much happiness and unhappiness. 



There is one point which I have not dealt with. 
Objectors may say that there is no evidence to 
[112] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

show that I am right In placing the Kmit of self- 
consciousness at the boundary line which separates 
man from other animals. They may say that tense 
and nervous self-consciousness — which makes us 
feel pain and sorrow so acutely — is rather the 
peculiarity of civilized man, and that when we fol- 
low the human scale down to savages and canni- 
bals, we find creatures with very slight sensibility 
to pain and apparently no knowledge of sorrow 
as an abiding sentiment. Therefore, they hold, 
there is no evidence to show that these very low 
human beings are more self-conscious than the 
higher animals of other classes. 

Now, this is a very difficult point to deal with, 
because we cannot obtain direct evidence by ques- 
tioning horses and dogs on the point; and in the 
case of the savages, the more you interrogate them 
the more you are impelled to regard them as mere 
animals. When you come across a tribe of island- 
ers who have half-a-dozen words to describe dif- 
ferent methods of putting a captive to death, but 
not a single word to express mercy, gratitude, or 
any moral virtue. It Is not easy to hold to the faith 
that man alone Is made In the likeness of God. 

In so many respects your faithful dog seems 
superior to the debased human savage that you 
are reluctant to erect between them a mental bar- 
rier which shuts off^ the dog among the lower ani- 
[ 113 ] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

mals, and admits the savage into the select com- 
pany of beings with the Hkeness of God in their 
consciences. 

But you must remember that a similar difficulty 
arises in classifying all orders of animals. 

When, for instance, we have been studying the 
wonderful ways of ants, bees, and wasps, whose 
actions seem to rival the highest efforts of human 
intelligence, and to be instinct with virtuous aff ec^ 
tion, it is a shock to come to the class next above 
them and find such things as sea-mats there; or, 
passing over these and the still higher classes, 
containing slugs and snails, oysters and cuttlefish, 
to come to the sea-squirts — things like mere bottles 
with two necks. But we cannot deny that in its 
earlier stages the sea-squirt resembles a tadpole 
with a central rod inside its body, which we must 
recognize (from analogy with the tadpole itself, 
which becomes a vertebrate frog, and the queer 
little lancelet, which leads us to the kingdom of 
fishes) as probably the first sign visible to us in 
nature of the evolution of the backbone, which 
in its highest development, encloses the brain and 
vital column of man himself. 

If we were as interested by personal sentiment 
in the ants and the bees as we are in our dogs and 
horses, we should more strongly resent the com- 
pulsion thus put upon us by science to place our 
[114] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

favorites so far down on the ladder of progressive 
life. It is this personal sentiment, arising out of 
our fondness for creatures that we cherish and ad- 
mire so much, which constitutes the great diffi- 
culty in the way of our belief that the lowest man 
belongs to a separate, higher class than the highest 
of other animals, simply by virtue of his posses- 
sion of self-consciousness. 

And this difficulty is the harder to combat be- 
cause anatomy provides no evidence in the mat- 
ter. You can dissect out the original rudiment of 
a backbone, but you cannot cut out a dead man's 
self -consciousness and put it under the microscope 
and say, " There ! " 

But if other animals had self -consciousness, i. e., 
if they thought about things, including them- 
selves, we should long ere this have been able to 
invent a language of sounds and signs in which 
we could converse with them upon all sorts of sub- 
jects. But they cannot think about things, only 
of them; so our converse with them as well as 
their converse with each other, is limited to ex- 
pressions of simple animal emotions. 

The possession of language, as a means of ex- 
pressing thoughts other than mere emotions, thus 
offers definite evidence that man alone is self- 
conscious. 

Another definite proof that man alone is self- 
[115] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

conscious is provided by the fact that man alone 
decorates his person. 

Certain creatures, such as the bower birds, 
might seem to have some artistic tendencies in the 
elaborate decoration of their bowers ; but this is 
only a curious development of the instinct of 
courtsliip for nesting purposes encouraged by na- 
ture for some useful reason. And I have little 
doubt that this reason would easily be discovered 
by anyone who, for that purpose, made an intelli- 
gent study of the habits of bower birds in their 
natural surroundings. 

The racket-tailed motmots, a species of South 
American birds allied to the bee-eaters, have a 
habit which comes nearer to personal decoration. 
They nibble away the webs of their two central 
tail feathers for an inch or an inch and a half, 
leaving the bare shaft with a large racket at the 
end of each, which adds greatly to their decora- 
tive appearance in the antics of courtship. 

Tliis unique habit on the part of a single species 
of American birds looks at first sight very like 
conscious self-decoration, but a moment's consid- 
eration will show that the bird who first did it 
could not have known that its work would have a 
decorative effect in flight and in the antics of 
courtsliip. There must have been some other rea- 
son ; and probabh^ the bird who first nibbled off^ 

[116] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

part of the feathers merely suffered from exces- 
sive vitality and restlessness, which is a common 
characteristic of most birds which catch insects 
on the wing. 

Feathers which have become racket-shaped by 
natural evolution are, however, frequent adorn- 
ments of birds, showing that in past ages such 
ornaments have appealed to the instinct of the 
females to favor the handsomest suitor. 

Therefore this exceptionally vigorous ancestor 
of the motmots was doubtless fortunate in his love 
affairs and begat children with a tendency to re- 
peat his habits. Nature needs no more than a 
lucky accident of this kind to work upon ; and we 
can easily understand how the habit has become 
stereotyped as the characteristic of a flourishing 
species. 

It was, of course, highly improbable that such 
a habit should have been inherited in the first 
instance; and the fact that only one kind of bird 
in the whole world does anything of the kind 
shows how very extremely improbable it was. 
Had it been otherwise, we should have scores of 
kinds of birds inheriting accidentally decorative 
habits. 

If, too, there were any intentional decoration in 
the habit, there would be variations and improve- 
ments in design. As it is, however, every motmot, 

[117] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

on attaining a certain age, instinctively nibbles 
off a certain part of the two longest feathers in 
his tail. He does this because it has been a heredi- 
tary habit in the species ever since its ancestor 
gained an accidental advantage in life from do- 
ing it. 

The human savage, however, differs from all 
other animals in his desire to make himself look 
better than he is, by decorating himself with 
feathers, shells, colored earth, skins, flowers, etc. 
This he would not do if he were not self-conscious ; 
nor would other animals, such as apes, leave it 
undone if they were self-conscious. 

Thus we see how the very slight essential dif- 
ference between man and other animals — in man's 
conscious habit of thinking about things, instead 
merely of them — ^has given him not only language, 
but also the instinct of artificial decoration. 
From these combined acquirements have come all 
literature and knowledge, all art and poetry, all 
clothing, fashions, and industries. 

And the greatest of all human gifts, the re- 
ligious sense, has been acquired in exactly the same 
way. 

The natural consequence of thinking about him- 
self, as an Individual capable of producing mani- 
fest effects by his own efforts, was that he thought 
about the way in which other manifest effects 
[118] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

were caused. To scare an enemy he would utter 
a terrible war cry ; whose war cry then, he would 
ask, was the thunder rolling terribly across the 
sky? He could fling handfuls of water this way 
or that; who then drove the mighty rivers along 
and tossed the waves of the sea? He could blow 
a flower to pieces ; whose breath shattered the for- 
est trees? 

Thus, by thinking about himself, man could not 
help thinking of some mysterious being or beings 
who controlled vaster forces than he. These, in 
one shape or another, became his gods, whom he 
tried to propitiate. 

Age by age the lamp of religion thus humbly 
lit has burned more brightly, with a purer flame, 
until in the great revealed Faith, that man has 
been made in the likeness of God, the whole civilized 
world is united. 

There was only danger lest the ever-growing 
number of those who studied nature and abhorred 
its apparent cruelty, as well as those who could 
not reconcile the demonstrated truths of science 
with the revealed truth of rehgion, should fall 
away. 

If I can help some few to realize, firstly — that 
nature is not cruel — because, lacking self-con- 
sciousness, other animals cannot consider whether 
they suff'er or not — and, secondly, that science and 

[119] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

religion at last go hand-in-hand, because the self- 
consciousness evolved in man is his likeness to God, 
and the foredestined end of his evolution is to 
reproduce God upon the earth, I shall not have 
written idly. 

Having thus briefly explained the grounds on 
which we are justified in concluding that self -con- 
sciousness begins with man and is not possessed 
by the higher animals of other classes, I will now 
answer the last and most difficult question of all, 
namely, how, if I am right in saying that no other 
animal than man is self-conscious, did self-con- 
sciousness begin in man? 

I do not at all admit that failure to answer this 
question would invalidate my argument. Having 
produced evidence to show that man is self-con- 
scious and other animals are not, inability to ex- 
plain the origin of these facts would not aff^ect 
their reality. But it is not in any way difficult 
to answer the question satisfactorily : and I regard 
it as the best evidence of the complete soundness 
of my argument, that it almost automatically 
answers every question and satisfies every objec- 
tion raised against it. 

The answer is that man alone of all animals ac- 
quired the ability to take concerted action with his 
fellows towards a common end. We sometimes 
witness conduct which looks like concerted action 
[120] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

among other creatures, it is true ; but the hkeness 
is only superficial. 

All the inmates of a beehive, for instance, ap- 
pear to be working in concert towards a common 
end : but each individual is really working inde- 
pendently, obeying the imperative instinct with 
which it is endowed by nature; and the fact 
that its work dovetails in so well with the work 
of the other members of the community is due 
to the evolution of the species as a gregarious 
insect. 

In the body of the individual bee we see a curi- 
ously close parallel to the organization of the 
community in which it lives ; for the bee, with its 
nerve-centers placed at intervals down the length 
of its body, has no central brain directing the 
harmonious action of its various limbs and organs. 
These act so independently of each other that 
if the body is cut off when the bee is drinking 
syrup the legs will continue to cling to the rim of 
the vessel, while the mouth continues to suck up 
the liquid, neither being aware that this pours out 
at the severed waist as fast as it is taken in at the 
head. At the same time the severed body, which 
ought to be receiving the syrup, will be darting 
its sting in and out in futile obedience to the in- 
stinct of self-defense. 

Similarly, during a great battle of the large 
[121] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

ants which are found in hot countries, you will see 
warrior ants, whose bodies have been bitten off, 
swaggering about in the absurdest manner and 
challenging all comers. 

In the same way that the different parts of an 
insect's body work in harmony, although each is 
moved by an independent instinct — which is only 
inherited habit or tendency — so the different mem- 
bers of an insect community work in harmony 
although there is no concert between them and 
each is merely going on steadily with the work 
that it was born to do. In the same way with 
higher animals, other than man, there is no con- 
certed plan of action in their communities ; but 
,each individual follows its own instinct, which is 
good for the community: otherwise it would not 
have been inherited. 

Thus, when wolves hunt together they do not 
hunt in concert. Each pursues the prey to the 
best of his ability and the combined ability of the 
pack generally runs the prey down. Beavers, con- 
structing a dam, work all together for a common 
end: but each member is vigorously obeying his 
own natural instinct only. 

We sometimes read, indeed, about herds of ani- 
mals or flocks of birds putting out sentinels to 
give them warning of danger. If they did so this 
would be concerted action; because in such herds 
[ 122 ] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

or flocks there are not special types or individuals 
born with the instinct to act as sentinels, nor are 
there any born with the authority to set the others 
to their duty. And observation shows that senti- 
nels are never posted, as has been supposed. 

What happens is this: Suppose that there is a 
party of rooks plundering a sown field, you will 
almost certainly see one or two rooks perched in 
neighboring trees, and, as you approach, these 
will utter a warning " caw," and all the marauders 
will be off. Superficially viewing the incident, you 
may, if you like, go into raptures over the intel- 
ligence of the rooks, who always post sentinels 
to give them warning of danger. 

But, if you really observe what occurs, you will 
see that there is no posting of sentinels. The sen- 
tinels are entirely self-appointed and they think 
only of their own interests. That by doing so they 
safeguard the community is merely one of those 
fortunate little coincidences of which nature al- 
ways takes full advantage. 

Each rook, being a wary bird, is uneasy so long 
as there is a risk of his being taken unawares by 
an enemy. Some, no doubt, are more wary or more 
nervous than others ; and when a flock descends to 
plunder a cornfield one or more of these nervous 
ones will prefer to alight in a neighboring tree 
and take a prolonged scrutiny of the neighboring 
[123] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

landscape. Usually there Is some man moving 
about somewhere in the distance, and the nervous 
rooks watch him. 

All this while the other rooks are feeding. Their 
instinct bids them to eat all they can so long as 
there are some rooks up in the tree on the look-out. 

But presently the rook in the tree is satisfied 
that there is no danger anywhere — besides which, 
he is very hungry — so he descends and joins the 
others. Some of these, having partially satisfied 
their hunger, feel more nervous than they did; 
and they fly up into the trees. After a time they 
again descend, and others, actuated by the same 
fears, take their place. So it almost always hap- 
pens that some birds are in the trees when rooks 
are plundering a sown field; but all of them are 
acting entirely on their own account, not knowing 
that nature has crystallized this habit In them for 
the good of the community. 

In fact, nowhere In nature, except where man Is 
concerned, will you find any evidence of dehber- 
ately concerted action appropriate to the circum- 
stances of the occasion. How, then, did man 
acquire this remarkable faculty? The answer Is, 
through hardship — through the stress of a severe 
struggle for existence sharpening his natural 
ability. 

For, if a man looks at himself, he finds plain 
[124] 



THE RISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 

evidence that he once belonged to the highest class 
of animals next to himself. His feet, with toes 
which are still more or less prehensile in infancy 
and among savage races — even the people who in- 
herit the ancient civilization of India will astonish 
you sometimes by picking up a spoon that has been 
dropped or replacing a coal on the fire with their 
feet, and the Indian tailor habitually holds his 
thread with his toes as he squats in your verandah 
— are manifestly modifications of the climbing 
hind-hands of four-handed ancestors, whose other 
descendants are still apes. 

On the other hand, our flat soles and the dis- 
connected bones in some of our toes show that 
many ages have passed since man used his feet for 
grasping purposes in climbing. What, then, caused 
the change in his habits? We may never be able 
to answer this question with certainty. It is in 
the last degree improbable that a creature, admir- 
ably adapted for climbing trees should have aban- 
doned the practice while still dwelling in the 
primeval forests ; because there all the fruits and 
the honey and the wild life are to be found on the 
sunny outside of the dense mass of vegetable 
growth. 

The probability is that man's predestined aban- 
donment of arboreal life came about through the 
gradual change of climate in the region which he 
[125] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

inhabited, converting what was once tropical for- 
est into wind-swept plain. 

Whatever the cause may have been, it is evident 
that man was compelled to break from all the tra- 
ditions of an arboreal race and to find his living 
on the open ground. Here, instead of gathering 
the fruits of the forest trees, he would learn to 
pick out the seeds from low-growing plants, and 
to this is probably due the original cleverness of 
human fingers: for it is an invariable rule of 
nature that hardship confers upon all creatures 
which successfully come through it, some valuable 
quality which raises them in the scale of life. 



[126] 



VII 

GOD IN MAN 



The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused 
Sustains and is the life of all that lives. 
Nature is but a name for an effect 
Whose cause is God. 

Cowper's "Task." 



CHAPTER VII 

GOD IN MAN 

What is Consciousness? — Imperfections of Language — 
" The Likeness of God "—The Unity of Nature— Types 
of Evolution— The Birth of a Chicken— Story of the 
Gall — Human Progress — The Creation — Conflicting 
Critics — The Virgin Birth and Incarnation — Science's 
Limitations. 

WHAT, then, is this human consciousness, which 
makes so enormous a difference between man and 
other animals? With this question we leave the 
fringe of the subject and touch the connecting link 
between religion and science. 

Consciousness is the power of considering our 
own actions and estimating our own feelings from 
a judicial point of view, of discriminating be- 
tween good and evil, and of controlling our natu- 
ral instincts accordingly. This power is the dis- 
tinguishing feature of humanity. It is that which 
justifies our claim to have been made " in the like- 
ness of God." One impulse of an animal may be 
checked by a stronger impulse, as when a hungry 
dog refrains from taking meat from fear of its 
owner's displeasure; but it is only man who looks 
[129] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

out sadly or happily upon the world around, al- 
ways in his consciousness approving that which is 
good and right, however bad his own conduct 
may be. 

This is the " likeness of God '' in man, which 
will in time supersede and displace the animal in 
him. 

For we know, of course, that, Hke all other 
creatures, we are even now only passing through 
a stage of our evolution ; though our religions 
date from times when evolution was unknown. 

It was, therefore, not possible for our great 
religious leaders, however directly they may have 
been inspired by the great truth, to express it in 
words — or even to conceive it in thoughts — which 
would stand the test of modern analysis. He who 
was inspired to teach that man is made in the Hke- 
ness of God his Father taught truth; but those 
who accepted and promulgated the doctrine could 
not understand the real meaning of the truth be- 
cause human knowledge had not then reached a 
stage in which the truth could be expressed in 
intelligible words. Indeed, I am not sure that it 
can be so expressed even now. 

Before we can express it, we must understand 
it ; and before we can do this, we must get rid of 
the idea that the " likeness of God " refers spe- 
cially, if at all, to our physique — our bodily 
[130] 



GOD IN MAN 

peculiarities as animals. The point in which we 
especially, perhaps solely, resemble God is our 
consciousness, the independence of our minds from 
the control of bodily matter. There is in us the 
germ of a superior existence — something which 
lifts us above the world of matter by which we are 
surrounded; something which convinces us that 
our souls are independent of our bodies with all 
their weaknesses. 

This is the crown of our evolution so far; but 
it is only a passing phase. There is more to fol- 
low; and each successive generation will see more 
clearly its relationship with God. 

How far it is possible for us to see at present 
is what concerns us ; and I think that the best 
medium through which we can look is the analogy 
of nature. 

The great lesson to be learned from nature is 
its unity. From the lowest up to the highest there 
is no break in the chain. All things are subject to 
the working of the same law of evolution ; and in 
the development of each living thing we see a 
summary of the entire evolution of its race. Thus 
we see that the highest plants and animals, even 
men themselves, have each their individual origin 
in a single cell contained in the body of the parent ; 
and the evolution of that cell into the perfect 
creature repeats stage by stage — though in a 

[131] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

blurred and imperfect way — the evolution of the 
race to which the creature belongs, from the 
original, lowest type of life — the simple, one-celled 
creatures, neither plant nor animal, which were 
first endowed with life by God, when the earth was 
void. 

Since, then, natural evolution thus reproduces 
its great processes in each small thing and sum-. 
marizes the work of ages in the life of each in- 
dividual, we are justified in looking around to see 
if there are any cases in which evolution has, so 
to speak, proceeded so far as to give us a clue 
to the mystery of the future. If everything works 
according to the same rule, may there not be some 
small things which complete their evolution before 
our eyes.^ In other words, are there no "little 
worlds " — for every organized body is said to be 
a "microcosm," or little world — ^which give us a 
clue to the mystery of the future of this great 
world and its inhabitants.? 

As a matter af fact such clues are offered to us 
on every hand, if we study nature. 

The everyday occurrence of the birth of a 
chicken from the egg is the crown of a complete 
evolution in miniature; for it shows how the germ 
of life in an infinitely small cell in the substance of 
the egg gradually permeates and brings to its use 
all the contents of the egg^ until the force of life 
[132] 



GOD IN MAN 

Within bursts its bounds, and the hve bird comes 
forth to join its parent, leaving behind only the 
empty eggshell, whose dead substance will be used 
again in the evolution of other life. ^^ e we have 
a clear parallel of the completed e> ion of life 
in the world. When the spark of eternal spirit 
which God the Father gave to the world shall 
have completed its evolution, it will leave the 
world and join its parent, leaving the dead matter 
of the earth to be used again in the evolution of 
other life. 

We see another completed evolution, and an- 
other parallel, in the history of any common gall 
created by a parent insect upon a plant. Very 
wonderful in its complicated structure, and often 
very beautiful, is the gall ; but it only serves its 
purpose as a wonderful and beautiful "little 
world " in which a germ of life placed there by a 
parent-fly completes its evolution. And from it at 
last a perfect fly comes forth, in the likeness of its 
parent, and leaves behind it the dead " little 
world," the substance of which will be used again 
in the evolution of other creatures. 

In these and other instances which leap to the 
mind from every survey of nature, we can surely 
trace, in a blurred and imperfect way, the natural 
parallel of our own evolution, the great truth of 
science which religion has always taught — that in 
[133] 



THE RELIGION OF X A TUBE 

due time man shall leave the world and rejoin his 
Father. 

What we have to bear in mind, however, is that 
we cannot guess from the appearance or character 
of anv creature at one stao;e of its evolution what 
its perfect state will be. Tlie germ of an egg bears 
no resemblance to a cliicken, the grub is utterly 
uiiHke the fly. So, when we try to tliink what the 
nature of man will be when his evolution shall 
have been completed, we must dismiss from our 
minds all thoughts of the character of man in liis 
present stage. 

We have indeed one clue, offered to us both bv 
rehgion and science. 

We know that the evolution of man, in so far as 
it is different from that of other animals, is the 
result of the development of his mental and moral 
powers. His advance is solely in the direction of 
the control of mind over matter. He recognizes 
liis body as only the temporary vehicle of a con- 
scious power of thought which has no limits in 
space or time. His sympatliies are world-wide, and 
he is dailv discoverino^ and usino^ new means for 
bringing the minds of all men into sympathy and 
union. We have little conception really of the 
great pace at which this evolution of man is pro- 
ceeding now. 

Every day records some new control established 

[ 13i ] 



GOD IN MAN 

by mind over matter. We employ forces of whose 
strength we are ignorant as yet ; and on many Hnes 
of mental inquiry we are proceeding rapidly to- 
wards a common meeting-point, whither we shall 
find that all religions and sciences, all philoso- 
phies and all wanderings in the darkness in our 
search for truth, have always tended — that point 
where man, perfect in knowledge of truth and con- 
scious power of mind, will complete his evolution 
and be worthy to join his Father, leaving the husk 
of the dead world behind to be used again in an- 
other evolution. 

Thus the science of religion — or the religion of 
science, call it which you will— teaches that God 
exists in this world in the human mind and that 
each of us is a temporary vehicle of a spark of 
the Spirit. 

Raised above the natural struggle for exist- 
ence, man has no longer need for those incessant 
slow processes of physical improvement which 
other animals achieve to enable them to keep level 
with jostling rivals. His advance is entirely on the 
Godlike side of his being, in his intellectual and 
moral qualities, where he has no rivals ; and, con- 
trasted with the imperceptibily slow rate of physi- 
cal evolution, his progress has been marvelously 
rapid and grows faster year by year. 

As an animal, man needs no improvement to 

[135] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

fulfill his high destiny ; as a man, with self -con- 
sciousness in the likeness of God, he is still far 
from fit to leave the world and meet the God who 
made him. 

But our present pace of progress is so swift. 
The miracles of yesterday — X-rays, wireless teleg- 
raphy, etc. — are the commonplaces of to-day ; and 
there will be new, undreamt of miracles to-morrow. 

In a very few generations all mankind will be 
civiHzed and educated. 

Savages will have ceased to exist. 

All humanity will realize, from the study of 
nature, its kinship with God and its destiny to 
return to God. It will not be long, then, before 
man shall be fit and ready to leave this old world 
and go to meet his Father. 

If I adhered strictly to the declaration in my 
preface I should stop here ; because I have reached 
the limit of my subject so far as it can be dealt 
with by means of argument. But so many readers 
have begged for more light upon the connection 
between this scientific argument and the truths of 
Christianity, that I will write a few words here. 

The point of difficulty, of course, is how to 
reconcile the gradual evolution of God in man with 
the Scriptural creation of man in the likeness of 
God. Yet it is not a real difficulty. Everything 
that has happened in this world since time began 

[136] 



GOD IN MAN 

has been the working of God in the world ; and the 
day came when — the world being already full of 
varied animal life — man was created, as a crea- 
ture, differing from all other animals by the con- 
scious possession of an immortal soul, which will 
rejoin God, its maker. 

If we believe that this creation of man as a 
superior creature, by his endowment with a con- 
science. In the likeness of God, was achieved by a 
continuation of the same process which had pre- 
viously created all other animals, we do not begin 
to doubt the Biblical narrative. We merely begin 
to understand it. 

We do not detract anything from the working 
of God in the world, by comprehending that the 
creation of man came as the harmonious climax 
to an ordered, predestined series of progressive 
changes. We merely become competent to realize 
and wonder at the marvel of it. 

Even if we regard our evolution as incomplete 
now, there is no need to suppose that our bodily 
form, dignified forever in the Bible narrative in 
its assumption by the Son of God, will be changed 
before the end of the world comes for us. 

Although I have been accused of " attempting 
to bolster up the effete creed of Christianity," I 
know that many good Christians must have found 
that my argument, tracing the evolution of man 

[137] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

towards God, leads them over strange ground, 
where they cannot recognize any of the famihar 
Scriptural landmarks. 

They cannot, for instance, see where, in a 
strictly scientific argument, based upon evolution, 
room can be found for the miracles which form 
the basis of Christian faith. 

But science cannot say a word against the pos- 
sibility of the miracles of the Bible: because it 
cannot presume to limit the future operations of 
a Power of whose qualities it has, by scientific 
methods, learned nothing whatever so far. 

Years ago — when men of science were dogmatic 
because their knowledge was so small — science 
would flatly have denied the possibility of many 
things which we do as matters of course to-day. 

A ship is in mid-ocean, and it gathers from the 
air the news which is being told that day on land 
a thousand miles away. 

You see a little glazed room at a railway station, 
or a postofRce, labelled " Public Telephone." You 
walk in and tell a friend a hundred miles away the 
joke which someone has just told you at the club. 
Then you walk out again as if you had done noth- 
ing particular. 

Yet there was a time when men — ^learned, 
righteous and God-fearing men, too, according to 
their dim lights — would have burned you at the 
[138] 



GO DIN MAN 

stake for saying that such things could possibly 
be done. 

Science to-day, grown wiser, does not use the 
word " impossible " : least of all in connection 
with the working of a force of which it knows 
nothing and can only recognize its vehicles and its 
results. 

And if science cannot say that man, grown 
Godlike in power and purity, may not in the future 
achieve what would be regarded as miracles to-daj^ 
— seeing that the commonplaces of to-day would 
have been miracles in the past — who can presume 
to say that the spirit of God did not, on one great 
occasion in the history of the human race, act 
directly to produce pure offspring of God in 
human form.^^ 

It is not my business to enlarge upon this theme, 
any more than it falls within my province to do 
more than briefly indicate that the gradual evolu- 
tion of man to God does not conflict with the 
Biblical account of the Creation and salvation of 
man. 

If, in following the gradual rise of man, we can 
recognize the point at which God endowed him with 
a living soul, i, e,, with the self-conscious sense of 
duty, which is conscience : it does not detract from 
the marvel of the fact, that it came as the natural 
crown of work which had been going on from the 
beginning of the world. 

[ 139 ] 



VIII 
ANATOMY NO GUIDE 



It wa^ his faith — perhaps is mine — 

That Life, in all its forms, is one; 

And that its secret conduits run 

Unseen, but in Unbroken line, 

From the great Fountain-head Divine, 

Through man and beast, through grain and grass. 

LOXGFELLOW. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ANATOMY NO GUIDE 

The Brain and the Mind — Anatomy's Limitations — Minds 
of Monkey and Man — An Imaginary Incident — The 
Growth of Language. 

A DIFFICULTY which some minds encounter in 
trying to understand how man alone possesses the 
power of conscious thought Is the fact that anat- 
omy reveals no difference between his nervous 
structure and that of other animals. 

This, however, presents no real difficulty. The 
nervous organization of animals is needed for the 
proper protection of their bodies from injury and 
for the guidance of their muscles ; and there is no 
reason why dissection of a human brain should 
reveal the seat of conscious thought, because al- 
most all qualities of the brain have so far evaded 
discovery by knife and microscope. Of course, the 
general difference between such a brain as con- 
ceived the dramas of Shakespeare and that of an 
ape might be demonstrated In diagrams ; but no 
demonstrator could explain what It Is that endows 
one of the two brains with possibilities of genius. 

And why should any of us wonder that the seat 
[143] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

of conscious thought is not conspicuously located 
in the human brain, when science cannot even point 
out the seat of life? 

Between a living man and a corpse there is all 
the difference which we see between machinery 
working at full blast and the same at rest. But in 
the case of the machinery we know exactly where 
to apply the match to light the fuel that will start 
the engine; whereas we have no man of science 
who, if he were dying and some mysterious power 
placed in his hands a spark of new life, would know 
in which part of his body it should be placed. 

Thus, even if the acquisition of the power of 
conscious thought were so wide a departure from 
the line of mere animal intelligence as the magni- 
tude of its consequences might seem to suggest, 
there would be no reason to expect to find traces 
of it in the bodily structure of our brain and 
nerves. 

But the truth is that the departure which savage 
man has made from the line of animal intelligence 
is very slight indeed. Perhaps we can sum up the 
difference most simply by saying that man, even 
in a savage state, thinks about things, while other 
animals merely think of things. By connections of 
ideas the animal is able to adopt a line of action 
which seems to indicate what we call intelligence, 
but such actions are only of the kind which nature 
[144] 



ANATOMY NO GUIDE 

can crystallize, If they prove useful to the race, 
into Instinctive habits. 

Man, In his lowest type, goes a little further 
only than this. His connections of Ideas do not 
necessarily end In action, like those of other ani- 
mals. One connection leads to another, and thus 
he follows a train of thought which leads his mind 
away from matters of the moment and away from 
his bodily needs or desires. Thus he Is constantly 
being reminded of his own Individuality as the 
central point to which his wandering thoughts in- 
variably return. 

When he Is pleased or when he is hurt he thinks 
about his sensations, and Is happy or unhappy In 
consequence. It Is the marvel and beauty of natu- 
ral evolution that great results grow gradually 
from such very slight beginnings ; and at first, no 
doubt, man's power of abstract thought went very 
little beyond that futile wandering of mind which 
Is often apparent on the face of a monkey when It 
sits alone, apparently oblivious for a while of Its 
surroundings, with a far-away look In Its eyes. 
But the mind of the monkey returns from Its 
wanderings empty-handed, so to speak — or, rather, 
drops Its gain on the threshold because there Is no 
conscious personality at home to receive It — 
whereas the mind of man eagerly grasps new 
knowledge from each excursion of its thoughts. 
[145] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

Perhaps an imaginary Incident will bring out 
this difference clearly. Let us suppose that a 
leopard had been the terror of a wood which was 
haunted by a troop of monkeys and a company of 
savages, and that in a final encounter with either 
of these it had been beaten off, fatally wounded 
and bleeding from the lungs. Now, it is practi- 
cally certain that a monkey which chanced to come 
upon the blood on the ground later would at once 
recognize the dreaded scent of the leopard and 
bound away in terror, chattering to his tribe to 
flee. A man, on the other hand, would note the 
bright color of the blood, and, knowing by experi- 
ence that creatures always die when they shed 
blood of that color, he would joyfully summon his 
comrades to come and search for the corpse. 

Thus man, from his power of thinking about 
the leopard instead of merely thinking of it, would 
gain a great advantage; and similar advantages 
would await him at every turn of circumstance. 
The habit, moreover, of thinking about things 
would necessitate the use of language. What you 
think of a thing can always be expressed by a 
single ejaculation of fear, pleasure, contempt, 
etc., such as other animals use ; but what you may 
think about it can only be expressed in human 
speech. 

In many other ways the human habit of think- 

[146] 



ANATOMY NO GUIDE 

ing just a little further than other animals — of 
using connections of ideas as stepping-stones to 
knowledge — must have had the effect of causing 
man to converse; and the use of language must 
have given him wider range of thought, since it 
placed all the experience and the knowledge of his 
tribe at his service. 

We can see, then, how easily and rapidly he 
would go ahead of all other animals in mental and 
moral evolution, and how he would inevitably 
acquire the habit of thinking more and more about 
his own sensations, causing him to feel happy or 
unhappy in circumstances which would scarcely 
have affected the equanimity of his ancestors. He 
would, in fact, cease to be an animal of impulses 
and instincts, and become a conscious human 
being. 

I think, therefore, that there is no need to dis- 
believe that this difference exists between men and 
other animals, merely because the dissecting-knife 
reveals no important difference in their nervous 
structure. 



[147] 



IX 

AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 



Some say that in the origin of things, 

When all Creation started into birth. 

The infant element received a law 

From which they swerve not since; 

That under force of that controlling ordinance they move 

And need not His immediate hand who first 

Prescribed their course, to regulate it noic. 

Cowper's "Task." 



CHAPTER IX 

AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

Darwin's Remarkable Admission — Atheists and ultra-Hu- 
manitarians — Kant's Testimony — David Hume as a 
Witness — Some Modern Thinkers — Letters from Cor- 
respondents. 

When I commenced this argument I had no 
idea what remarkable and welcome support my 
conclusions would gather from the works of some 
of the greatest thinkers of the past, such as Des- 
cartes, Kant, and David Hume. I was even un- 
aware that Darwin had partially enunciated the 
basis of my argument. 

Perhaps some explanation of my ignorance, es- 
pecially my ignorance of Descartes' ancient theory 
that animals are mere automata, may not be un- 
interesting, because, curiously enough, it arose 
from the fact that I had unwittingly adopted 
Descartes' own method for arriving at truth. 

As a boy I was a greedy devourer of books 

which might throw a light upon the mysteries of 

natural history; but it was not until I had read 

Darwin's " Origin of Species " and " Descent of 

[151] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

Man " that I found any light at all. And after 
these the works of all other writers seemed confus- 
ing and futile. So, like Descartes, I abandoned 
the reading of books and sought to find truth by 
my own unaided speculations. 

Perhaps it was a natural consequence that, like 
him, I should soon have arrived at that point of 
knowledge whence the fundamental difference be- 
tween man and other animals becomes plainly 
manifest, although I reached it from an opposite 
direction. 

For Descartes, with the ruthless accuracy of 
his philosophic methods, came straight to the con- 
clusion that man, by his conception of God, proves 
himself to be the sole possessor of a rational soul 
and that other animals are therefore mere autom- 
ata: whereas I, with the advantage of the two- 
and-a-half centuries of research which had cul- 
minated in Darwin's great works, was laboriously 
seeking for an explanation of the apparent cruelty 
in nature, and made my way from fact to fact, 
beginning from the very lowest forms of life, until 
at last I, too, found myself in possession of the 
great truth that, because man alone has, in his 
likeness to God, a self-conscious soul, he alone 
knows the meaning of unhappiness, which Is a 
spur to his development as the direct offspring 
of God. 

[152] 



AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

^^ Cogito: ergo sum'' — "I think: therefore I 
have conscience existence," — was the basis of Des- 
cartes' argument. " I have conscious existence : 
therefore I know that I come of God," is the con- 
clusion of my own. 

And because Descartes, living so long before 
the dawn of the truth of Evolution, could merely 
aver that animals had been finally created as mere 
automata, the acceptance of his teaching, with its 
inexorable logical consistency, undoubtedly led to 
cruelty in practice: whereas I have perfect con- 
fidence that no such consequence will follow from 
the proper understanding of the truth in its newer 
shape, that it is God within us which has raised 
us above the other animals, though they are ris- 
ing, too. 

Take my own case. Years ago, when I still be- 
lieved that animals suffer as we do, I used a gun 
for sport. Now, though I do not condemn the 
sportsman whose mind permits him to enjoy the 
sport of killing, because he is not yet enlightened 
by the truth, I cannot shed blood, except of neces- 
sity and with regret. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, after years of intense and 
sensitive study of Buddhism — a religion which may 
be described as a mystic blend of Christianity 
with evolution — gave us in poetic phrase the 
maxim, as I hold that it will be, of the re- 
[ 153 ] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

ligion of the future in its relation toward animal 
Hfe:— 

''Kill not, for 'pity's sake: and lest ye slay 
The meanest thing upon its upward way/' 

I quote these lines elsewhere: but they are lines 
which cannot be quoted too often. 

In Darwin's " Descent of Man " (second edi- 
tion), page 69 and the following 14 or 15 pages, 
the question of the mental similarity of other ani- 
mals to man is fully discussed. In these pages 
Darwin, with his inimitable genius for taking 
pains, piles up evidence to show that other animals 
exhibit anger, fear, memory, affection, etc., in the 
same way as man does. No one questions this now- 
adays ; but Darwin was undertaking a Herculean 
task in proving it, a generation ago. 

Exactly thirty years have passed since I read 
the book ; and I admit that I was pleased, on tak- 
ing it down from the shelf again, to find that 
Darwin stopped his argument, that man and other 
animals are ahke, exactly at the point where I say 
that men and other animals become different. 

After fourteen or fifteen pages crammed with 
facts arrayed to prove that the mental qualities 
of other animals are not different from ours, Dar- 
win says : " It may be freely admitted that no 
animal is self-conscious." 

[154] 



AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

It is true that he defines a man's self-conscious- 
ness as the power of reflecting upon " such points 
as whence he comes and whither he will go, 
or what is life and death, and so forth " ; 
but the " so forth " is an elastic phrase. It cer- 
tainly covers such questions as what is pain 
and pleasure, happiness or unhappiness, " and so 
forth." 

You must remember that Darwin was laboring 
to trace the mental likeness of man and other 
animals, for the purpose of establishing his theory 
of the descent of man ; and it is characteristic of 
the absolute fairness of his mind and the dry im- 
partiality of his conclusions that he frankly aban- 
doned the argument when he reached the human 
faculty of " self-consciousness." 

Darwin conceded this, although he was striving 
to establish an unpopular doctrine — ^now firmly 
established in all scientific minds — by heaping up 
evidence in its favor. Now we, on the other hand, 
who have accepted his doctrine of evolution as the 
mainspring of the machinery of existence, are more 
concerned in discovering the checks and limita- 
tions which modify its working. And I think that 
it is little short of marvelous that in the honesty 
of his intellect and in spite of his urgent desire to 
estabUsh the absolute identity of animal and human 
emotions and mental powers Darwin should have 
[155] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

written these words : " It may be freely admitted 
that no animal is self-conscious." 

It is never possible for anyone to please every- 
body, least of all when he ventures upon the de- 
batable ground of the relation of religion to sci- 
ence. Extreme atheists, who do not wish to believe 
that there can be a merciful God, and extreme 
humanitarians, who are so consumed with pity for 
animals as to refuse to believe that God can be 
merciful to them in sparing them the self-con- 
scious knowledge of their sufferings, are, of 
course, irreconcilable. " Comical " and " amus- 
ing " are the epithets applied by one humanitarian 
journal to my earnest attempt to convey to my 
readers the faith which enables me to look out upon 
the world of wild nature as a scene of everchang- 
ing interest without unhappiness. 

How far apart in creed may be the atheists, 
whom the sufferings of men impel to deny the Cre- 
ator, and the humanitarian, who insists that man, 
made in the Hkeness of God, is more brutal than 
the beasts, I cannot say : but if aught that I have 
written enables some to study nature without deny- 
ing or doubting God, I have done a good work; 
and it was a great pleasure to me to find that in 
the main basis, at any rate, of my argument I had 
the support of Darwin's master mind. 

Next let me quote an extract from the writings 

[156] 



AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

of Kant, probably the greatest of all philosophers 
of modern times, one significant passage: "The 
dog distinguishes roast meat from bread because 
he is affected differently by them (for different 
things produce different sensations), and the 
sensation of the former is the source of a different 
desire in him from that of the latter, in conse- 
quence of the natural connection of his instincts 
and his ideas.* From this we draw the sugges- 
tion to study more carefully the essential distinc- 
tion between rational and irrational animals. If 
we could discover what that secret faculty is by 
which judgment is possible we should solve the 
difficulty. 

My present opinion inclines to this, that this 
faculty or capacity is nothing but the power of 
the internal sense — that is, the power of making 
our own ideas the object of our thoughts." 

As a footnote to the sentence marked * in the 
above, Kant wrote : " It is, in fact, of the great- 
est importance to attend to this in an inquiry 
into the nature of the lower animals. In observing 
them we are aware merely of certain outward 
actions, the difference of which indicates a differ- 
ence in the determination of their desire. But it 
by no means follows that this is preceded in them 
by such an act of the faculty of knowledge that 
they are conscious of the agreement or disagrce- 

[157] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

ment of what is contained in one sensation with 
what is contained in another." 

Now Kant died in 1804; and, magnificent as 
his intellect was, it was not possible for him to 
anticipate the triumphant theory of evolution pro- 
pounded by Darwin half a century later. Had it 
been otherwise I think that there is Httle doubt 
that he would have recognized that this power of 
self-conscious thought — " the power of making 
our own ideas the object of our thoughts '' — which 
Darwin freely admits that animals other than man 
do not possess, has been evolved in man by the pre- 
ordained process of his natural evolution ; and that 
the power of thinking about our own thoughts, 
and f eeUng happy or unhappy in consequence, has 
been gradually acquired, beginning with that sim- 
ple difference which I have pointed out that man 
thinks about things and other animals only think 
of them. 

Thus, man's thoughts do not end with their first 
objective — the satisfaction of the instinctive im- 
pulse of the moment — but travel from one con- 
nection of ideas to another, returning always to 
" himself " as the central factor of his existence : 
" himself '' not being his body only but a con- 
scious person residing in it and judging its sensa- 
tions in terms of happiness and unhappiness. 

All this, I am sure, would have been visible at a 
[158] 



AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

glance to Kant's keen insight had he hved in these 
days. It is most encouraging to me to find that 
what I have tried to explain is only the corollary, 
so to speak, of the teachings of these great men. 

The quotation from Kant brings to memory 
" Huxley's pregnant words, spoken at Edinburgh 
in November, 1868, regarding Hume: ^ The most 
acute thinker of the eighteenth century, even 
though that century produced Kant,' " and the 
ninth section of Hume's 39th essay on " The Rea- 
son of Animals,'' contains some very remarkable 
references to my subject. 

I reproduce them here, because they so admir- 
ably express and define that diff^erence between man 
and other animals which I have been trying to 
explain. 

These, then, are extracts from the ninth section 
of David Hume's 39th essay on " The Reason of 
Animals " : — 

" And any theory by which we explain the oper- 
ations of the understanding, or the origin and 
connection of the passions in man, will acquire 
additional authority if we find that the same theory 
is requisite to explain the same phenomena in all 
other animals." 

" It seems evident that animals, as well as men, 
learn many things from experience, and infer that 

[ 159 ] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

the same events will always follow from the 
same causes." 

" Animals are not guided in inferences by rea- 
soning; neither are children; neither are the gen- 
erality of mankind in their ordinary actions and 
conclusions. . . . Nature must have provided 
some other principle, of more ready and more 
general use and application ; nor can an operation 
of such immense consequence in hfe as that of 
inferring effects from causes, be trusted to the 
uncertain process of reasoning and argumenta- 
tion." 

" But though animals learn many parts of their 
knowledge from observation, there are also many 
parts of it which they derive from the original 
hand of nature, which much exceed the share of 
capacity they possess on ordinary occasions, and 
in which they improve little or nothing by the 
longest practice and experience. These we de- 
nominate instincts, and are so apt to admire, as 
something very extraordinary and inexplicable by 
all the disquisitions of human understanding." 

" But our wonder will perhaps cease or dimin- 
ish when we consider that the experimental reason- 
ing itself, which we possess in common with beasts 
and on which the whole conduct of life depends, 
is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical 
power that acts in us unknown to ourselves, and 
[160] 



AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

in its chief operations is not directed by any such 
relations or comparisons of ideas as are the proper 
objects of our intellectual faculties. Though the 
instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct, 
which teaches a man to avoid the fire as much as 
that which teaches a bird with such exactness the 
art of incubation and the whole economy and order 
of its nursery.'' 

Could anything be more perfect and lucid than 
the crescendo of argument expressed in these ex- 
tracts? And the fact that they merely crystallize 
in virile English the truths which I have been 
trying to express encourages me greatly. It can- 
not be mere accident that great minds, such as 
those of Kant, David Hume, and Darwin, all ar- 
rived by their separate paths of straight, converg- 
ing thought at the point where my argument 
started — the fact, namely that animals are not 
conscious of the reasons for their actions. 

Among modern thinkers of course there are 
many who have questioned the extent to which 
animals can be conscious of feeling pain. 

Alfred Russel Wallace says : — " The supposed 
torments and miseries of animals . . . are the 
reflections of the imagined sensations of cultivated 
men and women in similar circumstances." 

In his " Miracles of Unbelief," Frank Ballard 

[161] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

speaks about the " grossly and sentimentally ex- 
aggerated mysteries of pain." 

I do not like to quote, as a rule, from the letters 
of living correspondents to myself, but these brief 
extracts from two letters may, perhaps, express 
the truth better than I have been able to. Here 
is one: — 

" Dear Sir, — I am afraid that many will never 
be convinced by your arguments, simply because 
they will not set aside for the moment their own 
preconceived ideas on the subject and endeavor 
to follow to their logical conclusion the arguments 
you bring forward. The point is that no one has 
ever before attempted to explain the apparent 
cruelty in nature, which must prove a stumbling- 
block to religious belief, and it is of vital im- 
portance that theologians should be prepared to 
deal with the subject, and the manner in which it 
has been ignored and glossed over is not to the 
best interests of our faith in a merciful Creator." 

The other letter runs: — 

" Sir, — May I venture to remark that perhaps 

if the relation of the phenomenon of consciousness 

to the nervous system were explained it might help 

towards a better understanding of an animal's re- 

[162] 



AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT 

lation to suffering. Most of us fail to realize the 
great amount of mental and bodily activity that 
goes on outside consciousness. Of course, this ap- 
plies to animals with greater force than it applies 
to man, because animals have a much more limited 
sphere of consciousness. Also, we overlook the 
fact that a man's nervous system will respond to a 
stimulus from without, and a state of conscious- 
ness {e. g,, pain) may be brought about as a result, 
while an animal's nervous system will respond to 
the same stimulus and no state of consciousness 
(i. e., no pain) will result. Therefore, we do not 
see the fallacy, although there is one, in believing 
that consciousness must be associated with a series 
of complicated actions performed by an animal to 
effect an end." 

I have quoted the foregoing because, while it 
admirably expresses the correct scientific point of 
view of the matter. It illustrates my difficulty in 
the expression of new ideas by means of old words, 
since the writer uses the word " pain " as equiva- 
lent to a form of consciousness, and I have been 
using the word " pain " — no other word being 
available — as equivalent to a bodily sensation, 
which may or may not be " conscious." 

The point of real importance, however, is that 
there is this vital difference between the feelings 
[163] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

of man and other animals, that we are self-con- 
scious — we know what we suffer — and they are 
not. In this conclusion we shall all be merely mak- 
ing a practical application of the truth at which 
Kant, Hume, Darwin, and other great thinkers 
arrived by following different lines of profound 
thought. 



[164] 



X 

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 



I falter where I firmly trod. 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith and grope. 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

Tennyson's " In Memoriam." 



CHAPTER X 

CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 

Humanitarian Objectors — Cruelty and Civilization — Trying 
to Hide the Light — A Dog's Lapses — Nobility of 
Domestic Animals — " The Larger Hope " — Our Educa- 
tive Influence. 

The hostility of some extreme humanitarians 
to the view that animals are mercifully spared self- 
conscious knowledge of their sufferings arises 
from the fear lest acceptance of the facts will 
encourage cruelty to animals, or at least will 
diminish the enthusiasm of those who support the 
movement for the prevention of such cruelty. 

Now this is not the case. 

True religious feeling and cruelty cannot exist 
in the human mind together; and the greatest 
obstacle hitherto to religious feeling has been the 
apparent cruelty of nature. 

Moreover, the growth of our human tendency 
to be kind to animals is a process which cannot be 
checked. It was only the imperfection of human 
creeds which caused the cruelties that have dis- 
graced our ecclesiastical histories. To be human, 

[ 167 ] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

to be humane, to be Godlike — are the three stages 
of our evolution as conscious beings ; and discov- 
eries of truth are only an index of our progress. 

Besides, even if it were true that belief in the 
fact that animals suffer unconsciously would tend 
to make the thoughtless more cruel in their actions, 
this would be a far less evil than that those who 
think should find their knowledge of nature a 
stumbling-block to religion. The thoughtless can 
be made to think by proper teaching, but the 
thinker can be aided only by the light of truth; 
and to refrain from telling him the truth for fear 
of being misinterpreted by the others would be 
one more instance of the fatal error of putting out 
the light to save the moth. The light of truth 
must shine in the end, and the attempt to hide it, 
from fear of present trouble, would be cowardly 
and cruel to the best of the rising generation. 

But the suggestion that belief in the fact that 
man alone is self-conscious will tend to encourage 
cruelty arises from a misapprehension of the na- 
ture of cruelty. 

Cruelty is that animal quality lingering in man 
— the joy of a hunting animal in possession of a 
victim — which civilization is stamping out, replac- 
ing it by a worldwide sympathy with everything 
that breathes. 

To understand the lives of other animals — even 
[ 168 ] 



CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 

if that understanding compels us to recognize that 
they have not our human consciousness — is to 
sympathize with their struggles and difficulties; 
and the idea of being cruel to them, should you 
entertain it for a moment, would betray to your 
own mind your unfitness to regard yourself as a 
civilized being. It would make you contemptible 
in your own sight. 

When the true knowledge of nature is universal, 
there will be no cruelty. 

Many people seem to think that this desirable 
state of things can be hurried on at once, and that 
cruelty to animals can be suppressed by constant 
appeals to sentiment. They therefore hold that it 
is bad policy to reveal the truth — that animals 
other than man are not self-conscious — because it 
will give the cruel an excuse to continue in their 
cruelty. I have received numbers of letters saying 
in effect : " No doubt your argument is perfectly 
sound; but why publish it.? Think of the harm 
it wiU do ! " 

But all this is a mistake. No great cause can 
be won on sentiment, which is matter of opinion ; 
because human opinions must always vary. Logic 
and truth, however, are arguments which no human 
mind can resist: and when the truth has been uni- 
versally understood and acknowledged that our 
human consciousness is that in which we bear the 

[169] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

likeness of God — that we stand to the lower ani- 
mals as the representatives of their God — cruelty 
will be impossible in any human mind. I wish that 
the avowed humanitarians would recognize how 
much stronger their position would be upon this 
higher plane; because there is wisdom in the old 
saying, " Omnia dat qui justa negat " — " He who 
denies the truth gives his whole case away." 

Before leaving the subject of the feelings of 
animals I would say a word or two to those who 
are passionately fond of animals, such as dogs and 
horses or other pets. 

In following the straight line of my argument, 
I have drawn a strict distinction between man and 
" other animals," because I believe it to be true 
that no other animal than man has gone through 
the ages of mental discipline which resulted in 
the development of self-consciousness. 

But I cannot help admitting — nay, loving ani- 
mals as I do, I am glad to claim — that like causes 
must always produce similar effects, and that in 
demanding obedience from our domesticated ani- 
mals and in permitting them to take concerted 
action with us in sport, agriculture, domestic life, 
etc., we may be on the way to endowing them with 
self-consciousness and morality. 

A well-trained dog's lapses may be deplorable 
[170] 



CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 

and totally inconsistent with morality: sometimes 
even they are incompatible with the possession of 
any conscious intelligence. 

The other day there was a great partridge-drive 
in my neighborhood and it so happened that one 
bird flew against a telegraph wire with such force 
that one of its wings was cut cleanly from its 
body. An exceptionally clever retriever was sent 
to fetch the bird, and it returned, perfectly satis- 
fied, with the wing, refusing to go and look for 
the bird again. 

Now, here was a manifest instance of the natu- 
ral instinct satisfied by the acquisition of a mouth- 
ful of feathers which had the right smell, ac- 
companied by complete ignorance of the mean- 
ing of the whole business. I do not think that an 
ancestor of man would have been content to come 
back with a handful of feathers instead of a bird. 

This is only a casual and imperfect illustration 
of the way in which the most intelligent dog, a 
creature that we have perhaps accustomed our- 
selves to treat almost as an equal, will suddenly 
throw us back to the beginning of all things, by 
showing that he has not really the faintest notion 
of the meaning of his own cleverness. 

Yet, on the other hand, there are many moments 
when those who love animals seem able to read in 
[171] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

their conduct, in their honest eyes, and their lov- 
ing human ways, something which no argument 
can touch. 

This, I believe to be, in some mysterious way, 
the spirit of God which we, possessing it, have been 
privileged partially to communicate. All this is 
at present surrounded with a haze of mystery. 
But I do believe that man, who is now the repre- 
sentative of God upon the earth, has a destiny and 
a power in relation to other animals which he has 
not yet learned to achieve and to exercise. I be- 
lieve that our growing sympathy with animal life 
is only the beginning of our realization of this 
fact. I believe that the yearning look on the face 
of a dog is a responsive echo to this truth. And I 
live in " the larger hope." 

So I will add this postscript to my argument 
regarding men and other animals and the con- 
nection between science and religion. I desired to 
carry the argument to its logical conclusion, be- 
fore pausing to consider what man, as the repre- 
sentative of God, will hereafter be able to effect 
for other animals ; and I admit that we have very 
little in the way of evidence to go upon, beyond 
the undoubted fact that we are able to educate 
animals and to elevate them. By this I do not re- 
fer so much to the cleverness of trained animals 
as to the noble characteristics which devotion to 

[172] 



CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 

man seems to bring out in them. We know so little 
of the home life of wild creatures that we can- 
not say what germs of such nobility the ancestors 
of our dogs and horses may have possessed ; but I 
believe that our natural feelings towards animals 
which we love — those feelings which have caused 
many to regard my argument with hostility — are 
right and true. I believe that we are justified in 
thinking that there is the germ of something more 
than mere animal instinct in their conduct to- 
wards us. 

And I would not draw any hard and fast line 
of separation between different classes of other 
animals in their capacity to exhibit improvement 
of character arising from devotion to man. There 
are few classes of animals which have not at one 
time or another been kept as pets by human be- 
ings; and the invariable testimony of the owners 
of such pets — donkeys, pigs, geese, squirrels, rats, 
tortoises, parrots, canaries, sparrows, mongooses, 
snakes, etc., etc. — is that they exhibit many charm- 
ing qualities and acquire unexpected intelligence. 

This is a very important fact, suggesting that 
all other animals possess latent capabilities of a 
higher order than those which their natural sur- 
roundings bring to the surface ; and there may be 
no reason why, if we only understood how to do 
it, we should not be able to help other animals 

[173] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

across the boundary line which now separates 
them from us. 

Our knowledge increases every day, and to fu- 
ture generations the means whereby the power of 
conscious thought can be awakened in other ani- 
mals may be a commonplace, both in theory and 
practice. 

But perhaps such power can only be possessed 
and exhibited by animals which have been raised 
by our aid above the natural struggle for exist- 
ence. We have seen how man himself, when he re- 
verts to the habits of a hunting animal, loses not 
only all sensibility as to the feelings of other 
animals, but also ceases to " suffer " from his own 
hardships. We have seen, too, that savages have 
risen very little above the level of animal existence, 
although in their lise of language, the habit of 
self -decoration, and the religious sense, they pos- 
sess all the germs of civilization. 

Nor, in spite of the enormous advances which 
we have made in other ways, can we ourselves claim 
to have left the savages far behind in our attitude 
towards other living creatures, since even now 
many of the most exalted and respected members 
of civilized society find their favorite pastime in 
killing for sport. 

They are not necessarily to be blamed for this. 
They are merely following a natural instinct 

[174] 



CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 

which cIviKzation has not yet eradicated. But each 
generation is more humane than its predecessor 
was, and it may not be long before man shall as- 
sume his proper role as the beneficent governor, 
protector and teacher of all wild life. 



[175] 



XI 

CONCLUSION 



'Oh, world as God has made it! — 

All is beauty, 
'And knowing this is Love, and 
Love is dutyJ^ 

Browning. 



CHAPTER XI 

CONCLUSION 

Summary of the Argument — The Creed of Nature — 
The Next Step? 

IN order to show that in the preceding chapters 
I have not been reasoning loosely, nor obscuring 
the question with literary flourishes, I will here lay 
the bare chain of my argument before my readers 
so that they may test for themselves the strength 
of each of the nineteen links of which it is com- 
posed, as follows: — 

1. There can be no unhappiness or " suffering '' 
— in the human sense of anguish, agony, pain, 
torment, torture, etc. — unless one knows what one 
feels. 

2. There can be no knowledge of what one feels 
without self -consciousness, that is to say, without 
the power of thinking about one's feelings. 

3. The lowest forms of plants, such as the green, 
slimy film which spreads over a damp paling, and 
is composed of myriads of microscopic one-celled 
plants, which multiply by splitting up, cannot have 
the power of thinking about their " feelings." 
When you brush against an old fence and make 

[179] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

your coat-sleeve green you do not cause hundreds 
of thousands of these to think about the " pain " 
that they have suffered. (All will, I think, admit 
this: but I have enlarged upon it, because it is 
the only link in my argument which is not logically 
self-evident. ) 

4. Since the lowest forms of plants cannot think 
about their own feelings, neither can the lowest 
animals : because there are some of these very low 
creatures which are, according to zoological defi- 
nitions, " animals " at one time and " plants " at 
another, and others which some rules of science 
class as plants and others class as animals. 

5. Since there is no distinction between the low- 
est animals and the lowest plants, the sensitive 
movements of an animal of a slightly higher class, 
such as a sea anemone, afford no evidence of con- 
scious knowledge of its feelings, because the sensi- 
tive plant shows equal sensibility. 

6. The sea anemone's method of capturing its 
prey affords no evidence of conscious thought, 
because the sundew plant catches prey by the 
same method. 

7. The sea anemone's method of defending 
itself by stinging affords no evidence of conscious 
thought, because the nettle plant defends itself 
by the same method. 

8. No other of the ordinary, instinctive actions 

[180] 



CONCLUSION 

of animals afford evidence of conscious thought, 
because none are more " clever " than the move- 
ments of the organs of many plants to secure 
cross-fertilization, etc. 

9. Even those actions of higher animals which 
do not at first sight seem to be instinctive, but 
appear to furnish evidence of moral sense and 
intelligent motive are found, upon examination 
(in the preceding pages), to be instinctive and 
unintelligent. The instances purposely selected to 
illustrate this have been those which are usually 
quoted by authorities as evidence of animals' 
moral sense and reasoning power ; namely : — 

a. The solitary wasp's care of its young. 

b. The care of aphides by ants. 

c. Birds' care for their young. 

d. The dog's devotion to its master. 

e. The cat's devotion to its home. 

f. The docility of the horse. 

g. The brain-power of the monkey. 

10. Thus we find that no actions performed by 
any animals afford evidence of the power of con- 
scious thought. On the other hand, they unques- 
tionably demonstrate the absence of conscious 
thought. 

11. But the actions of the very lowest types of 

[181] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

men demonstrate the power of conscious thought ; 
such as : — 

a. The use of language to express such 
thought. 

b. The use of personal decorations, which 
would not Le possible without conscious thought 
of personal appearance. 

c. The conception of religion, which could 
only arise from realizing the existence of a 
power or powers greater than those known to 
our senses ; which, in turn, could only be real- 
ized bv conscious thoua;ht about one's own 
limited power. 

12. Therefore the Kne of separation, to mark 
where self-consciousness begins, may confidently 
be drawn between the lowest man and the liighest 
of other animals. (Tliis is the meaning of the 
'* Hkeness of God '' in the man.) 

13. Therefore, man alone can " suffer '' (in the 
ordinary sense of the word) because man alone 
can know what he feels, being the only animal 
endowed with self-consciousness. 

14. Therefore there is no " cruelty " or " suf- 
fering " in nature, except where it exists in the 
thoughts of men. 

15. And the suffering of men is the spur wliich 

[182] 



CONCLUSION 

urges them upwards, the hfe of every man having 
a credit balance on the side of happiness. 

16- Therefore beneficence is the keynote of the 
history of the world and of man. (This proves the 
beneficence of man's Creator.) 

17. Man, moreover, is conscious of the su- 
periority of his soul and as he becomes civilized 
he becomes humane, i. e.y consciously beneficent 
towards all life in his thoughts and actions. 

18. Thus man becomes more Godlike age by 
age, and is by this process destined to complete 
his evolution in power and purity and to rejoin 
God. 

19. Thus are science and religion united. 

[As I have pointed out, the only link in this 
argument which is not logically self-evident is 
No. 3 ; because, though some persons who seem to 
imagine that they hold a brief for " suffering 
humanity " against his Creator would contradict 
No. 15, every man knows in his own heart that 
his own balance of happiness in life is on the right 
side. Therefore the only ground on which my con- 
clusion can be assailed is that, when you accident- 
ally brush off the green film from a rotten paling 
with your coat-sleeve you cause hundreds of thou- 
sands of plants to know that they feel pain: 
which, as Euclid would say, is absurd.] 
[183] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

It only remains for me to outline briefly the 
basis of the creed which is the offspring of this 
union of religion and science. 

It is that all the forces of nature whose opera- 
tions have so far been observed and chronicled by 
man are manifestations of one primal force, the 
spirit of God, working in the world from its dark 
beginning towards its glorious end. 

The attractions and affinities of matter are 
among the widest and oldest of these manifesta- 
tions ; while the workings of the human mind are 
the highest and newest — the very highest of all 
being those direct inspirations which from time 
to time have given to mankind the revealed truths 
of religion and those abstruse speculations which 
have resulted in the ascertained truths of science. 

Between these extremes of our present knowl- 
edge of the working of God in the world there is 
no reason why Christians should not read with 
reverent belief the Bible story of the Creation, 
recognizing it as the direct revelation of the truth 
by the spirit of God in man, expressed with as 
much scientific accuracy as the ideas and language 
of the age allowed. 

For in it we see how God first created the world 
in a nebulous shape — " without form and void " 
— and how the spirit of God, implanted therein and 
[184] 



CONCLUSION 

working by processes which we have accepted as 
laws of nature, brought the land and the sea into 
their places, absorbing the primeval vapors, so 
that the light of the sun and the moon and the 
stars shone upon the earth. 

Next we see how the working of the same spirit 
of God in the world became further manifest in 
the beginnings of life; and how by successive 
stages of evolution the various classes of the vege- 
table and animal kingdoms were created, the great 
work culminating in the creation of man as a self- 
conscious being " in the likeness of God." 

From this point we see how man rapidly ad- 
vanced in knowledge and power, until one race 
was distinguished above all others by the inspira- 
tion of its prophets with the revealed truth. 

From a worldly point of view the fortunes of 
the chosen people were thereafter less brilliant 
than those of some other races who knew not the 
truth of God working in them : and when the great 
shock of conflict occurred between truth and un- 
truth — when the very spirit of God, incarnate in 
human form, appeared as Christ, the Teacher of 
the world — untruth temporarily triumphed and 
stood with its heel upon the neck of truth. 

But man, even in spite of himself, is the chosen 
vehicle of the highest working of the spirit of 
God in the world, and in time the downtrodden 
[185] 



THE RELIGION OF NATURE 

truth permeated and ruled the whole civilized 
world. 

Meanwhile, however, the same spirit of God, 
working through the brain of man in other ways, 
brought within our reach certain great portions 
of the truth which, as formulated and catalogued 
by modern science, seemed at first sight to con- 
flict with the main truth as revealed by direct in- 
spiration in unscientific times. 

This apparent disagreement between religion 
and science has led many good men astray: but, 
as I have shown, the disagreement is not real: be- 
cause, when rightly viewed, the truths of science 
and the truth of religion are one and Indivisible. 

I have concluded my present task: but I have 
the courage to believe that many of my readers 
will be as unwilling as myself to let this matter 
end here — in the publication of a book. 

I believe that they will feel with me that this 
" Religion of Nature " is a real thing, and that we 
ought to strive to make it universally accepted as 
the very truth. 

Its mere promulgation in this httle, unpremedi- 
tated volume is nothing, compared with the conse- 
quences which follow from its acceptance. Already 
I have a mass of material which has rolled in upon 
me from many directions and ought not to be 
wasted. 

[186] 



CONCLUSION 

Standing, moreover, on a threshold which seems 
to offer to our reason and our conscience safe 
shelter from all storms of controversy and doubt, 
we should enter boldly and make our home there, 
if further examination and experience prove it 
to be as storm-proof as it appears. 

What should our first step be, is the question ; 
and I would suggest that all readers who are 
deeply interested in this subject and would like to 
follow it further, should write to me, sending any 
thoughts, inquiries, or suggestions which the read- 
ing of this book may have brought to their minds. 

As I have no facilities for dealing with large 
personal correspondence, I would ask all who may 
write, kindly to look for ad interim acknowledg- 
ments and notifications on the subject in " The 
Country-Side," which is published (and edited by 
me) at 2 Tudor Street, London, E. C, England. 

E. Kay Robinson. 

NORTHGATE HaLL, 

Warham, Wells, Norfolk, 
February, 1906. 

Kill not, for Pity's sake, and lest ye slay 
The meanest thing upon its upward way. 

—Sir Edwin Arnold, "The Light of Asia." 

THE END 

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